Perils of choosing Mr. Wrong
FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD Rating: ★★★ out of 5 Starring: Carey Mulligan, Matthias Schoenaerts, Michael Sheen Directed by: Thomas Vinterberg Running time: 119 minutes
Film adaptations have a way of flattening the subtleties of character in 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 — 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 screenwriter David Nicholls that he still manages to set up some of Hardy’s knotty psychology among all the compressed dramatics.
Madding 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.
Possessing 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 the orbit of three suitors, walking embodiments of what love might mean.
The first, and most natural, is Mr. Oak (Matthias Schoenaerts), a modest sheep farmer she meets while 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 he needs to have people wandering through them.
Smitten, Oak 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: he goes looking for work and finds it at a farm Bathsheba has happened to inherit.
Keeping a respectful but intimately caring distance, 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).
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, partly oblivious and partly 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.
Soon swooning Bathsheba is off to marry the man in uniform over the warnings of Oak and the ire of Boldwood.
Things predictably deteriorate from there, 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 wouldbe husbands: it aches for everyone and the three actors do a gutting job of silently responding to the beauty and disappointment of the moment.
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.