Fields of dreams
This beautiful and beautifully acted adaptation carries off the trick of being both timeless and ultra-modern
It takes a special talent to make a period film that transcends the corseted confines of the stereotypical British-made costume drama. Ang Lee (Sense and Sensibility), Joe Wright (Pride & Prejudice, Anna Karenina) and True Detective director Carey Fukunaga (Jane Eyre) all pulled off superlative adaptations of literary classics by respecting the spirit of their source material but being bold in the way they told their stories on screen. Interestingly, Thomas Hardy’s work has been relatively well served in this respect over the years. John Schlesinger’s 1967 adaptation of Far From the Madding Crowd, Roman Polanski’s Tess (1979) and Michael Winterbottom’s Jude (1996) all brought their respective source novels to life with a livedin quality that felt pertinent to the moment of their making, not constrained by some mandate to turn the cinema screen into a mausoleum for bloodless characters adhering to outmoded ideals.
To that list must now be added Thomas Vinterberg’s new take on Far From the Madding Crowd, the first since Schlesinger’s film gifted cinema audiences with the luminous presence of Julie Christie as Hardy’s forthright heroine Bathsheba Everdene. Like that film it’s an adaptation that feels ultra-modern and simultaneously timeless, a trick pulled off largely by Vinterberg’s ability to capture the bucolic, mist-shrouded haziness of Hardy’s Wessex while letting the complex emotional turmoil raging within the characters bleed into the drama. Vinterberg – one of the original architects of the Dogme 95 manifesto – certainly brings a vibrancy and emotional directness
familiar from the likes of The Celebration and The Hunt to Hardy’s tale of gender politics, conflicting loyalties and the frequently irrational machinations of the heart.
He’s aided greatly by a cast who are more than up to the challenge of confronting their cinematic forebears head on, starting with Carey Mulligan as Bathsheba, the hardworking, headstrong young woman whose inheritance of a farm provides her with the independence she’s always craved and the attentions of three men she’s done her best to spurn. Though it’s tempting to draw a modern parallel with that other cinematic Everdene currently dominating cinema (The Hunger Games’ Katniss Everdeen was inspired by, and named for, Hardy’s heroine), Mulligan’s nononsense portrayal is tough but playful, brimming with humour and self-confidence, but also delicately shaded, ensuring that her for all her outward bravado, Bathsheba remains as complicated and conflicted as anyone else about the value of human company.
These doubts and dilemmas come to the fore as three suitors enter her life. The first is the angelic Gabriel Oak (Matthias Schoenaerts), a strapping sheep farmer who is quickly disavowed of his naïve belief that his modest holdings will impress Bathsheba enough to enter into marriage with him. When he fails to protect his own flock, losing everything in the process – a scene Vinterberg films with distressing explicitness – his sense of failure combined with his reversal of fortune leads him to devote his life to protecting Bathsheba’s interests after she hires him as her new shepherd. Recalling the reticent bruiser he played in Rust & Bone, Schoenaerts’ brooding presence anchors the film as Bathsheba finds herself connecting in conflicting ways with her wealthy neighbour, William Boldwood (Sheen), who becomes infatuated with her after an act of frivolity on her part is misinterpreted as potentially amorous overture, and with Sergeant Troy (Tom Sturridge), an arrogant, peacocking soldier to whose otherwise disdainful presence she feels irrationally drawn.
Sheen in particular is great here. He brings a nuanced authority to an entirely decent older man. Boldwood’s past heartache has damaged him in a way he can’t quite articulate but he’s convinced himself that Bathsheba holds the key to his salvation. That’s a burden she’s instinctively unwilling to carry and it may be part of the reason for her attraction to Troy, whose infamous sword-wielding seduction scene – immortalised by Terrence Stamp in the earlier version – remains intact. But he too has been damaged by a past romantic travail and while Sturridge’s boorish portrayal makes it hard to see what it is about him that captures Bathsheba’s fancy, the film uses this discrepancy to emphasise how easily even the most sensible head can be tricked by the heart into committing to the wrong person.
Vinterberg is canny enough to understand that it’s this emotional hell that continues to resonate. The uncertainties and recriminations, the missed opportunities, the mistakes that echo for years... we’re fated to repeat this stuff, the film seems to be saying, despite our best attempts to control the chaos of our own lives. Hardy’s nothing if not a great chronicler of these woes, but the film also traps us in a dreamy hinterland where people can also find their way to the ones they’re meant to be with in spite of themselves. Tragedy, it turns out, doesn’t always have to be tragic.