FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD
Film adaptations have a way of flattening some of the subtleties of character of Victorian and Edwardian novels, turning careful studies of obligation and desire into flighty little wind vanes of plot twists and happenstance. There’s plenty of highfalutin’ soap opera stuff in Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd already — caskets get flung open, people come back from the dead, bitter fate intervenes with the regularity of summer rain — so it’s some credit to writer David Nicolls that he still manages to set up some of Hardy’s knotty psychology among all the compressed dramatics. (Of course, it’s not his first kick here: he’s also done a miniseries version of Tess of the d’Urbervilles and 2012’s adaptation of Great Expectations.)
Crowd follows the relatively modern story of Bathsheba Everdene (Carey Mulligan), a woman who does not let the 19th century’s expectations of a lady dictate her behaviour. Possessed of a honed sense of independence — which Mulligan manages to embody almost to the point of physical transformation, her bright face sanded down to its stern hardwood core — she is slowly drawn into orbit of three suitors, walking embodiments of what love might mean.
The first, and most natural, is Mr. Oak (Matthias Schoenaerts, rugged romance distilled to the point it might take your breath away), a modest sheep farmer who meets Bathseba while she’s galloping through the English countryside. (As with all historical dramas, unspoiled vistas are constantly lingered upon, in this case with such luscious care you sometimes wonder if director Thomas Vinterberg isn’t mildly annoyed that he needs to have people constantly wandering through them.) Smitten, he offers his hand in marriage, which she’s inclined to decline: independence and all that, you know.
They meet again after their fortunes have reversed: with all his sheep run off a cliff — the beauty even in the destruction again suggests Vinterberg has more affinity for the natural world than the peopled one — he goes looking for work, and finds it at a farm that Bathsheba has happened to inherit. Keeping a respectful but intimately caring distance — what a man, what a man, what a man, etc. — he gets a front-row seat for a pair of more insistent suitors: the reserved but wealthy Mr. Boldwood (Michael Sheen) and impetuous peacock Sergeant Francis Troy (Tom Sturridge).
Mr. Boldwood is the stolid, rational choice, also so helplessly stuffy that he thinks openly reminding Bathsheba of that will actually convince her; he’s such a non-entity to her she actually sends him a Valentine as a joke, partially oblivious and partially unconcerned to how it will be received. The Sergeant, meanwhile, has no interest in working on her mind; once they meet in a shady glade, and he impresses her by flashing his, ahem, sword all around her body. No one has ever felt an independence of spirit in their bikini zone, and Bathsheba is off to marry the man in uniform over the warnings of Mr. Oak and the ire of Mr. Boldwood.
Things predictably deteriorate from there — Madding Crowd is a fine argument for the importance of allowing sex before marriage, actually — though the movie is better at setting up this love square than watching it collapse. Maybe the best scene here has Bathsheba singing, “Let No Man Steal Your Thyme,” an old folk ballad about the dangers of fleeting love, in front of two of her would-be husbands: it aches for everyone, and the three actors do a gutting job of silently responding to the beauty and disappointment of the moment.
The acting stays solid — Mulligan in particular has that mystical movie star quality of being just enough of someone else on top of her charismatic self, and she feels every hit of the gauntlet Bathsheba makes for herself — but it’s not quite as urgent once everyone has been put in their place and pushed down the hill. For a story that’s all about choice and consequence, the way it rips through plot points in the latter half makes the ending feel more like an inevitable contrivance than a maturation. Although, in fairness, the scenery always stays just as beautiful.