There are two rules of thumb for films adapted from beloved English literary novels. First, it's not textual fidelity or lavish production design that make such features engaging, but incisive, top-shelf performances. Second, even a superbly acted adaptation should bring some cinematic verve to the table. (Think Joe Wright's lean, stylish Pride & Prejudice or Cary Fukunaga's darkling Jane Eyre.) Fortunately, Danish director Thomas Vinterberg's new film version of Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd possesses both a fine cast and enough enticing sights and sounds to stand out from most period melodramas.
The film follows the financial and romantic tribulations of 19th-century bachelorette Bathsheba Everdene, portrayed by Carey Mulligan as figure of shimmering feminine willpower. Inheriting a relation's rambling West Country farm, Bathsheba proves a tireless and no-nonsense lady of the manor. She is also the object of desire for three disparate men. The estate's good-hearted shepherd is Gabriel Oak (Matthias Schoenaerts), whose marriage proposal Bathsheba once rebuffed. Her more recent suitor is neighboring landowner William Boldwood (Michael Sheen), who makes his case awkwardly and tirelessly. Meanwhile, against her own best instincts, Bathsheba becomes infatuated with dashing soldier Francis Troy (Tom Sturridge), who is regrettably also a drunken lout.
Vinterberg and writer David Nicholls present Bathsheba's life as a poignant tale of human weakness and ill fortunate, but Far's most conspicuous pleasures are sensory rather than dramatic. The Dorset landscape is appropriately ravishing, with a fierceness still rustling behind the stone walls and hedgerows. Meanwhile, Craig Armstrong's superb score establishes a mood of unabashed romanticism, employing folk tinges in a nod to John Schlesinger’s 1967 film adaptation. Along with cinematographer Charlotte Bruus Christensen's conjuration of a startling, almost tactile nocturnal gloom, these elements lend the film an aesthetic impact that matches the soapy twists in Bathsheba's tale.
Far From the Madding Crowd opens Friday, May 8 at Plaza Frontenac Cinema, 210 Plaza Frontenac, 314-994-3733.
