When word got out that Danish director Thomas Vinterberg was planning, in the early 2010s, to release a new film version of Thomas Hardy’s classic novel Far from the Madding Crowd, many people were skeptical. After all, that novel had been filmed as a “talkie” twice before—once in 1967 by famed director John Schlesinger and once again, in 1998, under director Nicholas Renton, as a television miniseries. Skeptics thought it unlikely that Vinterberg’s effort could ever equal—let alone excel—the 1967 Schlesinger film. That film (a three-hour “epic” with a musical overture and an intermission) had featured several of the biggest stars of its era. Julie Christie had played Bathsheba Everdene; Alan Bates had played Gabriel Oak; Peter Finch had played William Boldwood; and Terence Stamp had played Francis “Frank” Troy. In Hardy’s first truly successful novel, all three of these very different men seek to marry Bathsheba. She eventually does choose the young, handsome, dashing Troy, but their marriage soon turns into a romantic and financial disaster. When Troy goes missing, presumably through suicide, the aging Boldwood steps up his own frustrated courtship. But when Troy suddenly reappears and tries to reclaim his wife and her fortune, Boldwood shoots and kills him and is then himself consigned to prison. Finally, at the end of the film, Bathsheba decides to marry Gabriel Oak, the patient, reliable, mature young man she should probably have chosen to begin with.
Many critics—but hardly all—considered the 1967 movie a classic film. Thomas Vinterberg, it seemed, would be taking an enormous risk by releasing his own version. But Vinterberg persisted, and the gamble paid off. His film, which appeared in 2015, was very positively reviewed, and in fact some commentators (but not all) considered it a definite improvement over the Schlesinger adaptation. For his four lead characters, Vinterberg chose Carey Mulligan as Bathsheba; Matthias Schoenaerts as Oak; Michael Sheen as Boldwood; and Tom Sturridge as Troy. My purpose here is to survey critical responses to the film—reactions ranging from negative to mixed to positive and to very positive indeed. Many critical reviews, as will be seen, were quite enthusiastic.
Negative Reviews
Angus Wolfe Murray, of Eye for Film, penned a particularly negative review, stating that the film “goes for the jug and massages your senses with landscape artistry” that Murray claimed “Dorset’s tourist board would die for.” He had little patience, however, for the film’s use of natural elements, claiming that “the farm stuff is frankly daft” and unrealistic and faulting the unusually elegant costumes Bathsheba Everdene wears in the field. Murray was particularly irked by scenes of characters “splashing around in the dipping troughs with immaculately clean ewes,” wondering if the filmmakers knew that such dips are “poisonous.” Murray further complained about the pace, calling it “slower than a trot” and criticizing Vinterberg for wanting only to “sit in the shade of The Pretty Tree and watch nature tell lies.”
Murray considered the acting the film’s greatest asset, saying it saves “what is left of [the movie’s] honour.” He particularly praised Mulligan, calling her face so “expressive” that she did not need dialogue to convey Bathsheba’s deepest feelings. He further praised Matthias Schoenaerts, saying he “breaks free from mediocrity and succeeds” in making Gabriel Oak seem real and similarly commended Michael Sheen (“Mr Nice Sad”) in playing the “toughest role.” But Murray called Tom Sturridge “the biggest let down . . . as the mustachioed ex-army cad,” saying “he lacks what Sergeant Troy needs—charm, sex appeal, self-confidence and magnetism.” Murray awarded the film only two out of five stars.
Jesse Cataldo, of Slant magazine, shared Murray’s negative views, saying “the film only lingers at the fringes of its interesting conceit,” so that “instead of advancing character psychology or digging into the thorny nature” of the relationships between Bathsheba Everdene and her suitors, “Vinterberg’s bland direction obsesses over pretty portraiture,” achieving results Cataldo branded as “handsome but subtextually thin.” He said, “the filmmakers’ lack of real analysis or consideration” produced a movie “perilously close to a Goldilocks-style depiction of privileged female indecision.” He feared that by allegedly “approaching the material without an eye for what it might have to say about today’s society” the film “loses the novel’s original subversiveness in favor of frothier details,” adding that “this fixation on dreamy fluff elements diminishes the film’s potential, transforming it into a high-flown tale of complicated romance rather than an incisive social critique.”
Mixed Reviews
Penning a negative-to-mixed review, Dana Huntley of British Heritage magazine claimed that Thomas Vinterberg had “turned the untamed, unfeeling natural world of Hardy’s Wessex into a landscape garden” where “all of nature is beautiful to the eye; all the peasants are rosy-cheeked and good natured; all the barnyards are free of muck and clutter” and all “the world is almost unbearably pretty,” but adding, nonetheless, that “it is almost impossible not to like this lavish, lush film” because, “after all, this is a love story, where the good guy wins in the end.” Huntley appreciated the “breath-taking” cinematography, commenting that “Dorset is indeed among the most beautiful of the shires” and praising the “sweeping, evocative and almost ethereal landscape shots” as well as the “lingering close-ups with soft focus” in which “each of the principals in this love quartet telegraphs their emotions and their ambiguities unequivocally to the audience, if not to each other.”
Huntley, however, called the film “Thomas Hardy light” and a “condensed or Classics Illustrated version,” writing that although “the story, the characters and the choices they make are familiar, it doesn’t feel like Thomas Hardy’s world at all” and asserting that “far from the bright, scrubbed countryside and faces” offered in the film, in Hardy’s own Wessex “nature and life are grubby, hard and far from benevolent.” Huntley did think that Carey Mulligan, Michael Sheen, and Matthias Schoenarts had turned in “fine performances” but felt that viewers were “often left wondering about their motivations. In 1967’s movie,” Huntley continued, “Julie Christie, Peter Finch and Alan Bates are grittier in the same roles, but they are also better developed as characters.” Huntley conceded, though, that because of its “40-minutes longer screen run,” there was “just more time” in the 1967 film “to unpack [the characters’] complexity.” While classifying the film as a “chick flick,” Huntley also called it “great,” urging audiences to “see it for the sheer visual beauty of its scenes and the lush southern English landscape and its stylized depiction of agrarian life in the Victorian mid-19th century. Then,” he continued, “do read the novel.”
In an even more mixed review, Lynden Barber of Limelight magazine called the film a “respectable and in some respects rather good adaptation.” Like Huntley, Barber praised the cinematography for “giv[ing] an appealingly soft light to Hardy’s Wessex,” which he labeled “a thinly disguised Dorset” and its surroundings. He appreciated how “some of the less clear details of the narrative in the earlier film, such as the details of Bathsheba’s inheritance, are now spelled out more clearly.” He also praised the cast, claiming that Carey Mulligan (“arguably an even more accomplished screen actress than Christie”) delivered “a vivid and nuanced performance,” adding that “Sheen makes a typically fine impression as the wealthy William Boldwood.”
Despite offering this praise, however, Barber claimed that “there’s something about this version that just didn’t quite capture my imagination or imprint itself in my mind’s eye.” Although calling Thomas Vinterberg “a fine director,” Barber said he “lack[ed] the outstanding compositional eye that helped Tony Richardson and his director of photography, Nicolas Roeg, to create such a memorably striking experience” in the 1967 film. “Also disappointing,” he continued, “is the casting of France’s Matthias Schoenaerts’s Gabriel Oak,” quipping that “in playing ‘saintly’ he achieves ‘dull.’ Tom Sturridge,” he felt, “fares better as Sergeant Troy but almost inevitably lacks the young Terence Stamp’s raffish charisma.” However, Barber thought the film’s biggest flaw was its relative brevity: “at two hours compared to Richardson’s nearly three, the film wraps up its scenes without leaving them enough time to breathe.” While he said the 2015 film “may tell its story efficiently,” he considered it “less accomplished at making [the story] feel lived in.”
The Los Angeles Times’ Betsy Sharkey, in a mixed-to-positive review, claimed the film was simultaneously “directed with sensitivity to the source” and “pared to the bone,” resulting in “a far lighter examination of the emotional crosscurrents of love and desire that Hardy dived into so deeply.” The movie therefore had, Sharkey felt, “less angst” and “less heart.” She asserted, however, that the parts of Hardy that do make it into the film’s script are “wonderfully realized on-screen by a crack creative team,” including costume designer Janet Patterson, who had created “a distinct vision for what could only be called farm couture. Somehow,” she joked, “the muck never messes with the dresses. . . .” She also praised “Glasgow-born musician Craig Armstrong” for setting all the action “to a merry old England sound. Wind instruments,” she warned, “are involved.”
Sharkey criticized Bathsheba’s romance with Troy, blaming the “leanness of the script” for the jolting “change of heart in our heroine. . . . In Hardy’s novel,” she said, “her feelings are much more tied into Troy’s sexual magnetism and what the young woman senses—that the dashing sergeant is the one man who doesn’t need her.” The bare-bones script, she felt, implies “that just a bit of fancy sword work does the trick,” so that “all we’ve been given to believe about Bathsheba crumbles in a few unbelievable moments, along with a stray lock of hair the sword slices away.” Sharkey felt that “even Mulligan, as good as she is at giving Bathsheba a spine and a spirit, fades at this point.”
Sharkey asserted that “the film’s best pairing is between Mulligan and Schoenaerts.” Like earlier reviewers, she singled out Oak’s “unwavering devotion” as the trait that “anchors the narrative,” saying that this relationship is “definitely the one to get right. Both characters,” she continued, “are strong and stubborn, and yet the attraction is there” as “the actors make that tension palpable” with “a world of love, tenderness, hurt, rejection, [and] respect playing out in their glances and brief conversations.” She felt that Michael Sheen, unfortunately, “had little room to get into the desperation and obsession that defines Boldwood’s wooing,” adding that “a similar fate awaits Sturridge” as “the actor simply isn’t given enough time to stir the kind of passion that would sweep the pragmatic Bathsheba off her feet.” But despite these shortcomings, Sharkey admitted that “between the sheer on-screen beauty and the finely wrought performances of Mulligan and Schoenaerts, ‘Far from the Madding Crowd’ has its appeal,” although she added that, “like unrequited love, one can’t help but lament what might have been.”
In another mixed-to-positive review, Robbie Collin of the London Daily Telegraph praised the scenery and cinematography, commending both Thomas Vinterberg and director of photography Charlotte Bruus Christensen for “draw[ing] out the setting’s raw-boned beauty.” He claimed, however, that Vinterberg created “something far more conventional” than Collin had hoped for, calling this adaptation “less of a soul-gnawing, Nordically inflected tragedy than a superior Sunday-evening costume drama, or a mini-break in cinema form.” Collin did feel that the acting in Vinterberg’s version stood up to the acting in its 1967 predecessor, seeing Carey Mulligan’s Bathsheba as “every bit as much a Hardy heroine for our times as Christie’s was for the late Sixties” and describing her as “more reflective and less flighty, but also earnest to a fault.” However, Collin felt that “her male co-stars can’t match her pace” but mostly blamed the script for omitting “a handful of vital, character-shaping scenes,” and thus “cram[ming] the plot into a commercially friendly two hours.” He wrote that because “Schlesinger’s version was 50 minutes longer” it left notably more time for character and story development.
Collin was particularly frustrated by Tom Sturridge’s depiction of Troy, claiming that this character’s “most charming and scurrilous scenes have fallen by the wayside,” thus making “Bathsheba’s dealings with him ring less psychologically true.” However, he credited Sturridge with making “the best of the neutered material,” adding that “the scene in which Troy seduces Bathsheba in the forest with a display of swordsmanship improves on Stamp’s version.” Collin also had mixed feelings about Matthias Schoenhart’s Gabriel Oak, saying that although the actor “makes a fine heart-throb . . . his chemistry with Mulligan is all but overshadowed by the double-act he strikes up with Michael Sheen” as Boldwood. Ultimately, he wrote that “the film mostly behaves itself,” branding it “a wholly respectable adaptation” but adding that “a flash or two more of wildness wouldn’t have gone amiss.”
Another mixed-to-positive review came from A. O. Scott of the New York Times. Scott called this adaptation “swifter and more superficial” than the 1967 film, claiming that it “[felt] like an unusually fresh and surprising romantic comedy.” Of course, he conceded, “that’s not quite what Hardy or the filmmakers . . . intended.” Scott called the film’s mood “less Hardy-esque than vaguely Hardy-ish,” writing that although Bathsheba’s “mistakes and spells of indecision are engaging,” they did not seem “terribly consequential.” In all, Scott felt that “it all feels a little flimsy.” The actors, he admitted, “are all fun to watch” even though “only Mr. Schoenaerts seems interested in testing the deeper currents of longing, shame and pride that course beneath the surface. The most obvious thing to say about ‘Far from the Madding Crowd,’” Scott concluded, “is also the most bizarre . . . it’s buoyant, pleasant and easygoing.” Scott admitted that while “that’s a recommendation of sorts,” it is “also an expression of disappointment.”
Variety magazine’s Scott Foundas contributed his own mixed-to-positive review, calling the film “solid but unremarkable” as well as “calm, stately,” and “perfectly respectable, but never particularly stirring.” He thought Thomas Vinterberg had produced a “pared-down if generally faithful adaptation” that benefitted “from a solid cast and impeccable production values,” adding, however, that “the passions that drive Hardy’s characters remain more stated than truly felt.”
Nonetheless, he assured readers that “the ‘Downton Abbey’ set will find much to enjoy here” what with “Kave Quinn’s muddied, weathered sets and Janet Patterson’s costumes” that “add to the sense of a hard-working society where function trumps decorous forms.” Likewise, he felt that audiences might appreciate the “richly orchestrated but sparingly used score” that “does its best to articulate the bottled-up emotions the characters themselves cannot” express.
Foundas seemed torn in his review of the film’s cast, saying that while “Mulligan makes a fine Bathsheba Everdene,” the “chameleonic, Belgian-born Schoenaerts” was “less than entirely sure of himself onscreen” and ended up “underplaying so much (and grappling with a come-and-go British accent) that the already recessive Gabriel risk[ed] becoming a peripheral character in what is, ostensibly, his own story.” Foundas did praise both Tom Sturridge and the film’s direction for the sexually charged swordplay episode, calling it “the best scene in Vinterberg’s film, thanks largely to the cockeyed swagger of Sturridge” who, Foundas said, “has never seemed quite this dangerously alive in a movie.”
In all, Foundas thought that the film “lurches from one major event to the next” and lacks “enough down time in between,” a trait that “compromises the story’s panoramic sweep.” But he wrote that the filmmakers, by “rely[ing] mostly on natural light and spacious widescreen frames to capture the land in all its rugged, forbidding beauty,” did create “at every turn . . . a vibrant sense of time and place that pulls us into Hardy’s bygone world even when the drama falters.”
Mostly Positive Reviews
A mostly positive review by National Review’s Ross Douthat claimed that although this adaptation cast “a potent two-hour spell” despite its relative brevity, “Hardy’s plot depends so much on coincidences, missed connections, and sudden reversals of fortune” that “piling them all so close together throws the story’s sheer unlikeliness into rather sharp relief.” However, he continued, “this is cinema, where a perfect set piece is worth a lot more than a granular realism,” arguing that “the new version . . . does its set pieces, its fires and storms, and shootings, very well indeed.” Less well done, Douthat claimed, was Tom Sturridge’s portrayal of Frank Troy, asserting that Troy’s union with Bathsheba was “obviously foredoomed, but perhaps even more so in the movie than in the book.” He called Sturridge “the cast’s weak link—pallid and mush-mouthed,” saying that although Sturridge “embod[ied] his character’s weaknesses well enough,” he did so “without the sexual charge that explains Bathsheba’s swoon.” Douthat found Carey Mulligan’s Bathsheba “much better,” writing that “she gives us a proto-feminist Bathsheba, doughty and independent until the fall into Troy and aged by self-loathing afterward. She’s well matched with Schoenaerts,” he continued, “who is slow-burning and somehow beautifully large.” However, Douthat thought his face was “slightly wrong” and “too essentially Belgian . . . for a role that’s supposed to be organically English.” He reserved his deepest praise for Michael Sheen, calling his William Boldwood a “figure of tremendous pathos, the most Shakespearean of the story’s parts” and adding that “Sheen plays him, pitch-perfectly, as a man selling both his dignity and his self-awareness piece by piece” while “clinging to the hope that before he’s sold everything he’ll get his heart’s desire in return.” In all, Douthat concluded that “the movie’s landscape is visually but not culturally rich” and that “the film does not even try to go as deep into rural folkways as the novel.” But he thought it did provide “a few true Wessex moments” that reach deeper than the surface and stir up real emotion—in both the cast and the audience.
John Beifuss of the Memphis Commercial Appeal, in another mostly positive response, said “the movie offers the too-often-taken-for-granted pleasures of most well-made period films, including fine actors in a solid story.” He did warn that “the brutality and frankness of Hardy’s storytelling may surprise those used to more genteel period adaptations,” adding that “it is likely this harshness that attracted Vinterberg.” Yet, despite the film’s intensity, Beifuss disliked its allegedly unimaginative score, and, to some extent, “Mulligan’s calm presence.” He faulted “this intelligent actress’ signature wry, self-aware half-smile” for suggesting that “all will be well with Bathsheba, even when the twists of the plot threaten otherwise.”
In a long and mostly positive review, Erica Abeel in Film International Journal praised Thomas Vinterberg for “triumphantly mak[ing] the case for a 21st-century adaptation with an epic that’s deeply immersive,” terming the movie “romantic without being cheesy, and visually splendid. Vinterberg’s revamp,” she predicted, “should hit the sweet spot for lovers of the classics” since it “featur[es] great turns from peerless Brit thesps, and a mix of Hardy-esque dramatics with meticulous period realism.” She thought this adaptation would “remind viewers of how hungry they are for an epic romance minus the cynicism and snark” as well as for relatable characters. She wrote, for instance, that although Carey Mulligan’s Bathsheba “hails from Victorian times,” she “feels fresh and of the moment as a spirited, complex woman determined to guard her independence.” In fact, Abeel praised Mulligan’s Bathsheba as more relatable than “Julie Christie’s in the Schlesinger film,” seeing the latter as “a more feral creature” than Mulligan’s version with her real “competence” and “intelligence.”
Abeel also appreciated Matthias Schoenaerts’s depiction of Gabriel Oak, calling this role “a challenge, since the arc of [Oak’s] journey is essentially interior.” She thought “the Belgian actor makes the character’s ‘oak-like’ sturdiness both manly and compelling,” saying “his Gabriel acts as emotional ballast to the other suitors” who, she claimed, “edge toward the bonkers spectrum.” But she did appreciate Michael Sheen for delivering “a Boldwood who has everything but the ability to regard himself as an attractive man,” adding that “in his loneliness and futile desire for Bathsheba, his Boldwood is both comic and poignant.” But although Abeel—like many other reviewers—faulted Tom Sturridge’s Sergeant Troy, she claimed that his “character is underwritten” and that “his fixation on Fanny” (the woman he loved before Bathsheba) is “too quickly dispatched to leave an impact.” She also faulted “the screenplay’s other ellipses,” saying that while “necessarily slimming down the plot” they “also at times feel abrupt.” Similarly, she wrote that “a bigger cavil is Vinterberg’s reliance on a clichéd soaring score, heavy on the strings, the go-to music for ‘epic’ grandeur.” In all, though, Abeel asserted that “this new Madding Crowd offers a delicious, escapist journey, spirited, complex characters, and a fascinating meditation on the role of chance and fate in human affairs.”
Positive Reviews
Chris Nashawaty of Entertainment Weekly, calling this adaptation “the best yet,” joined earlier reviewers in singing the praises of Carey Mulligan’s Bathsheba, commending her as a “strong and smart and sensual” heroine who “refuses to play the helpless, hapless victim.” His only criticism of the film’s casting—and, largely, of the film itself—was that the casting “makes it too obvious who Mr. Right is from the get-go: Matthias Schoenaerts’ Gabriel Oak.” But this, Nashawaty felt, was a small price to pay for an otherwise well-done film, assuring viewers that “even if you don’t consider yourself an easy mark for literary bodice-rippers served with a side of sexual politics, this Madding Crowd gives you plenty of reason to swoon.” He awarded the film a grade of B+.
Similarly, Peter Travers of Rolling Stone magazine offered raucous “cheers” to Thomas Vinterberg “for blowing the antiquated dust off Thomas Hardy’s 1874 novel” and for working from a “tight script” that “cuts right to the chase.” Although commenting that “Vinterberg may rush the final act,” he praised the “pitch-perfect performances from Schoenaerts, Sheen and Sturridge” as well as the glimpses of Carey Mulligan’s “wild side” and her ability to “hold a close-up like nobody’s business. She’s a live wire,” he concluded, “in a movie that knows how to stir up a classic for the here and now.” He awarded the film three out of four stars.
In yet another positive review, Peter Rainer of the Christian Science Monitor applauded the film for not “soft-pedal[ling] Bathsheba’s frailties” by depicting her as a proto-feminist heroine. Carey Mulligan’s Bathsheba, he claimed, “is such an encompassing portrait” that he “never felt as if I was watching a ‘type.’ Bathsheba, with all her warring impulses, is ferociously her own woman.” He also appreciated how Michael Sheen’s “daring” performance as Boldwood took him “from ardent suitor to deluded wreck,” a trajectory Rainer thought “makes perfect emotional sense.” He concluded by saying that “Vinterberg approaches the novel with fresh, if somewhat becalmed, eyes,” and “the result is far from Hardy Lite.” He awarded the film a B+.
USA Today’s Claudia Puig called the film “enthralling” in remaking the “dark world” of Hardy’s novel, “where suffering reigns supreme,” and for creating “vibrant beauty, complexity and romantic potential while remaining faithful to the source.” She said, “it works on all levels” because “it is brilliantly directed” and has a “top-notch cast.” The script, she added, “is spot-on,” and “the sublime production—particularly the gorgeous cinematography, deft editing and beautiful musical score—transports the viewer into the English countryside.” She particularly appreciated “Vinterberg’s use of natural lighting and evocative close-ups” to “enhance a sense of earthy realism.” Like Peter Rainer, Puig also praised Carey Mulligan’s Bathsheba as a “modern” woman and “proto-feminist” with an “astonishing” story in “an enthralling, complex, nimbly acted drama with a sweeping romance that doesn’t shy away from sexual politics.” She awarded the film four stars out of a possible four.
Reviewing the film for the Philadelphia Daily News, Gary Thompson praised it for shifting focus away from Bathsheba’s choice of husband (“a secondary question, at best”) to explore instead her “winsome independence,” calling it “a distressingly rare thing in our purportedly more evolved cinema to see a confident, industrious woman succeed in this particular way.” He admired Carey Mulligan’s Bathsheba, writing that this character’s grit . . . puts Mulligan in her best light. She plays Bathsheba “with wit and humor and makes the character’s shrewdness and self-reliance irresistibly attractive.” Likewise, Thompson praised Matthias Schoenaerts as an excellent romantic opposite, quipping that he “is the perfect fellow to hoe this particular row.” Overall, Thompson celebrated the film as a “stately, handsome, appealingly old-fashioned” adaptation.
Deborah Ross of the London Spectator called the adaptation “a proper film with proper acting and it even comes with a proper story that makes proper sense,” quipping that “some films are like this, you know.” Of the film’s direction, production, and vision and its comparison with the 1967 adaptation, she asked the inevitable question: “does this work in and of itself?” She continued: “having asked the question, I will answer it: yes. It has its flaws,” she acknowledged, noting that “the character of Fanny Robin is underwritten” to the point that “Troy cries over her a lot, but we never quite get why.” Likewise, she found the story “so truncated that even the famous fairground scene has been ejected.” But despite these misgivings, Ross said she “always felt involved.” The film, she wrote, is “told at a cracking pace,” with strong depictions of Hardy’s characters. She called Carey Mulligan’s Bathsheba “spirited, as they say, and independent and sometimes perverse, but always stylish (never the same outfit twice, I noted).” She also felt that Bathsheba “manages to seem both of the 19th century and modern.” Ross praised Michael Sheen for “play[ing] Boldwood with tremendous sympathy” by depicting “a wealthy and awkward man who is so unbearably lonely and repressed that to have hope, and then see that hope curdle, has to be too much.” Mulligan, she wrote, was “a very fine actress,” adding that “aside from her face being one of those faces you just want to keep looking at, she adds heft to a character who might otherwise simply be changeable,” saying Mulligan “ably portrays the journey of a woman who has everything going for her apart from the one facet she must acquire: wisdom.” Ross wrote that the “beautifully filmed” adaptation offered “a vivid sense of both time and place as the camera scans the rugged beauty of the rural landscape, but mostly,” she continued, “it is what you want any drama to be: involving.”
Michael Sragow of Film Comment described the movie as “beautifully and at times stunningly edited,” adding that while “Thomas Vinterberg and screenwriter David Nicholls set their limits too narrowly and self-consciously . . . at its best their film stings like a lash—especially,” he continued, “when its inspired, passionate, and sometimes impetuous heroine inadvertently breaks the heart and sanity of a solid country squire who is woefully naïve at love and marriage.” Sragow said “Carey Mulligan interprets Bathsheba Everdene brilliantly,” making her “an innately modern woman.” Likewise, he admired “Sheen’s love-wracked Boldwood,” saying he “triggers Far from the Madding Crowd’s most poignant, resonant sequences.” Sragow, like earlier reviews, noted Bathsheba’s proto-feminist dialogue, observing that her “declarations of independence seem so contemporary that you’d swear Nicholls had zealously updated Hardy’s dialogue” although, in fact, “most of it comes straight out of the novel.” He thought that “if this Bathsheba registers as more up-front and aware than she does in the book, it’s because Nicholls’s compression of the action produces revelatory climaxes at a relentless pace. The result,” he stated, “is often classy, symbolic melodrama” thanks to the distinctive “star quality” Carey Mulligan brings to Bathsheba: “She exudes the sexiness of a person who delights in possibilities, and the gravity of one who knows when it’s time to play for keeps. Her presence,” he continued, “ignites costume designer Janet Patterson, who picks up on Hardy’s hints that Bathsheba relishes dressing up.”
Further Positive Reviews
Sophia Lee, of World magazine, praised the film for redefining “feminine spin,” saying that “rather than picket against gender roles, the film actually draws an understated yet realistic and appealing portrayal of traditional femininity and masculinity” built on “the lead actors’ exquisite performances.” Lee called the story “achingly tragic, beautifully captured, and sweet in all its mundane moments” as it “revolves around Bathsheba’s three very different ideals of love: steadfast and gentle friendship; material comfort and stability; or passion and sex.” Yet, “when it comes to love,” Lee continued, “even someone as smart and independent as Bathsheba will expose moments of folly and vulnerability.”
Graham Fuller of Cineaste wrote that Gabriel Oak, the “conscience of the film no less than the book,” is “the single character who puts others’ needs before his own and who never acts selfishly, despite being casually humiliated by better-off men.” Drawing from the biblical tale of Bathsheba’s namesake and her own “targeting by the male gaze,” the film, Fuller said, is punctuated by “enormous close-ups of Bathsheba’s face” that give it “its most indelible images.” Thanks, at least in part, to “those staggering close-ups of Bathsheba,” Fuller found the film “intimate in scale” and wrote that because Thomas Vinterberg “centers on the emotional life and dilemmas of an unmarried woman of means in 1870 rural England—one whose property becomes her husband’s if she marries—his and Nicholls’s additions are geared to visualizing and verbalizing her relationships with her suitors.” But Fuller thought that although this focus often results in scenes filled with sexual tension and eroticism, “Vinterberg never allows these charged romantic and sexual moments to topple into bathos,” just as he also does not “neglect the moment-to-moment confusion of sensations that afflict Bathsheba as she works through her romantic ordeals and socioeconomic worries.”
Fuller argued that in order to convey these situations adequately without overshadowing them with cheap, emotional manipulation, “one of Vinterberg and Charlotte Bruus Christensen’s key strategies was to use chiaroscuro lighting to anoint the planes of Carey Mulligan’s face simultaneously with light and dark” as a way of implying her inner conflicts. The filmmakers also employed “a series of two-shots that show Bathsheba and Gabriel (more often than her other suitors) facing each other from opposite sides of the frame,” thus, placing them “on equal footing.” Fuller especially praised this film’s William Boldwood, saying his “erotomaniacal obsession with [Bathsheba] is the source of masochistic agony heartbreakingly rendered by Sheen.” He also admired Mulligan’s Bathsheba as a woman who, “with much greater conviction than in Schlesinger’s film . . . shrugs off her hesitancy,” thus, raising “the oft-debated question of Far from the Madding Crowd’s status as a feminist novel” since “at the end of the film, she rides after Gabriel,” with “her love for him and need to hear his opinions now clear to her.”
Christy Lemire, of RogerEbert.com, hailed Thomas Vinterberg for creating “a rich aesthetic that combines both vibrant colors and intimate natural light,” adding that “whether his film is lush or rolling in the muck, it always has a tactile quality that makes it accessible,” something she felt “is also true of the performances from his (mostly) well-chosen cast.” Lemire called Carey Mulligan’s “radiant” Bathsheba a character who “simply does not care what anyone thinks of her, which makes her even more exciting to watch,” especially since “the depth of her voice” fascinatingly contrasts “with her birdlike frame,” giving her “a directness . . . reminiscent of a young Katharine Hepburn.” Lemire thought Matthias Schoenaerts, who combined “physicality and sensitivity,” had a “strong chemistry with Mulligan from the start,” adding that Michael Sheen, “the veteran of the cast prompts great sympathy for” William Boldwood as a “lonely but insistent middle-aged man” who “makes you want to give him a hug.” Lemire noted, however, that when Frank Troy enters “Bathsheba’s proclamations of self-sufficiency go out the window.”
Noting that David Nicholls, in adapting Hardy, had “abbreviated quite a bit and spelled out some emotions and motivations to expedite matters,” Lemire wrote that “[e]xcept for a few gaps this mostly works, and it helps contribute to the film’s surprisingly brisk, engaging pace.” She called the swordplay scene “not exactly the subtlest form of foreplay” but judged it “the boldest moment in Sturridge’s otherwise strangely restrained performance.” Lemire felt that Tom Sturridge’s Troy, especially when compared to Terrence Stamp’s depiction, is mostly a “pouty lad.” Like many other reviewers, Lemire complained that “Troy’s previous relationship with a servant from Bathsheba’s farm, which is so crucial to understanding his actions, gets short shrift here,” calling it “a casualty of the screenplay’s cuts” that “reduces the presence of the appealing Juno Temple to glorified-cameo status.” She concluded by praising cinematographer Charlotte Bruus Christensen for capturing the “variable rural surroundings with breathtaking style,” and recommended seeing the film, challenging her readers to “just try to stop yourself from swooning.”
Andrew O’Hehir, of Salon, called the film “a gorgeous literary adaptation true to its period and its source material in almost every respect” while also managing to feel “charged with life and hunger and romantic-erotic energy”—an energy he largely attributed to Troy. Sure, O’Hehir admitted, “Sturridge’s plummy portrayal . . . may verge on dandyish stereotype,” but he thought that Frank “finds some more complicated coloration as the story progresses,” adding that “his Redcoat sergeant is unquestionably handsome enough to charm the knickers off heiresses and maids alike.” In some ways, he claimed, “Frank is like Satan”: he is “vain and proud and feels wounded by God and disillusioned in love.” Although admitting that Troy “behaves despicably,” O’Hehir thought that “what he brings with him—at least, in the projected or potential future of this story—can put men and women on an equal footing, and set them free.”
Additional Positive Reviews
Kristian Lin, in another positive review for the Fort Worth Weekly, reminisced about the 1967 film, saying it “boasted stunning visuals, a feel for the texture of life in rural 19th-century England, and a trio of great actors in the principal male roles.” Although he thought the new version could not “compete with its predecessor on any of those fronts,” he added that “it does have a trump card, and her name is Carey Mulligan.” This film, he said, was “close to an ideal showcase for Mulligan, who infuses the movie with her slim, poised presence and incandescent dimpled smile,” continuing that “her delicate English-rose looks belie her inner steeliness,” saying “she gets multiple chances to wield it here” and lamenting, “if only the men were equal to her.”
Lin thought “Sheen rises to the challenge as an awkward man carrying a pitiful torch,” but he warned viewers that “Sturridge suffers mightily if you remember Terence Stamp’s panache in the same role . . . . Meanwhile,” he continued, “Schoenaerts looks uncomfortable as the stolid Gabriel,” adding that “while his English is quite good, this ruggedly handsome Belgian actor has been much more memorable playing crazy guys in Europe (Rust and Bone) and America (The Drop).” Overall, Lin felt that Matthias Schoenaerts “lacks the forceful uprightness of Alan Bates from the older film.”
Lin did praise the direction and design, claiming that Thomas Vinterberg “eschews postcard prettiness in favor of narrative momentum while cinematographer Charlotte Bruus Christensen and costume designer Janet Patterson give the audience some lush visuals to look at.” His main complaint involved the film’s original source material—Hardy’s novel. He disliked Hardy’s build-up of a “fiercely independent heroine” who is “reduced by the story’s end to flailing about in indecision and plaintively asking Gabriel what she should do with her love life.” Because Lin considered the source imperfect, he regretted that the filmmakers’ “fidelity to the novel robs their lead actress of a much-needed moment of explosiveness.” Despite this complaint, however, Lin wrote that Mulligan’s “luminescent intelligence, quiet resolve, and physical exuberance are the lasting impressions that you get from Far from the Madding Crowd.”
Offering another positive if very brief review, Chris Vognar of the Dallas Morning News called the film a “gorgeous,” “sturdy,” and “muscular” movie offering both “universal and modern appeal.” He wrote that “Bathsheba’s mercurial path of self-discovery allows Mulligan to showcase her rapierlike alertness and depth as an actress.” Although commending Michael Sheen as “a picture of tragic restraint,” he considered Matthias Schoenaerts “a bit too pure to be true.” He gave the film a B+.
Peter Howell, of the Toronto Star, commenting that the “handsomely directed” film “excised portions of [Hardy’s] narrative,” thought “it still retains the capacity to shock” but suggested that such surprises may only be in store “for those who labour under the misguided notion that a smart woman (or indeed a smart man) is incapable of making foolish decisions regarding matters of the heart.” Howell thought Carey Mulligan was “most fortuitously cast” and especially admired her “combination of guile and innocence.” While finding the story a bit predictable, he also took “much pleasure in watching these fine actors navigate rough emotional waters, each conveying as much in sidewise glances as they do in direct discourse. The exception,” he allowed, “might be Tom Sturridge’s almost clownish Troy, who seems incapable of turning a head so strong as Bathsheba’s.” Howell joked: “it can’t just be about the scarlet uniform and the fancy swordplay, can it?”
Like almost every other reviewer, NJ.com’s Stephen Whitty also appreciated Carey Mulligan’s casting as Bathsheba, saying “there has always been something intelligent and slightly mocking about Mulligan’s face” and adding that “even in repose it can’t quite hide a dimpling smile. So,” he continued, “she’s marvelous and maddening as the proud Bathsheba, who can neither commit to anyone nor engineer a clean break; she keeps people dangling, like useless limbs.” Whitty was less impressed, however, with Mulligan’s three male costars, calling them “good actors” but claiming that “only Schoenaerts has any real charisma.” Whitty echoed others’ opinions that “Vinterberg’s version doesn’t have the sweep of the 1967” film (“nor the wry irony of its recent update, ‘Tamara Drewe’”). But he considered it still worth watching “as a chance to see another fine portrayal by Mulligan” as well as “an opportunity to spend a few hours in a fevered fantasy world of prim and proper ladies and hot-headed shepherd boys.”
An especially positive review, by Colin Covert of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, called the film “first-class”— a “trim, largely faithful account” that is “as darkly poetic as the novel, but finally more crowd-pleasing,” adding that “it’s beautifully old and atmospheric without feeling dated.” He praised Carey Mulligan as “always impressive” and never “finer than as this sharp, lovely ingenue” in “a brisk performance” that is “steps above the frisky, kittenish Julie Christie in John Schlesinger’s 1967 variant.” He thought her costumes complemented her growth and development, noting that “as Bathsheba advances to worldly success, Mulligan grows ever more stunning in revealingly tight dresses of vivid red and blue” which “set her apart, a standout from the landscape palette of brown and green in Charlotte Bruus Christensen’s superb cinematography.” Like many reviewers, Covert could not help but mention the sexually-charged swordplay episode, saying “it would be a laughable scene if Mulligan didn’t look so aflame or Sturridge looked less rakish.” Overall, he said, “Vinterberg’s elegant film is a departure from love-story genre standards,” one that “gives more attention to the drama of the heroine’s egocentric impulses than to her lengthy game of romance roulette. Mulligan,” he asserted, “handles her role like a chic warrior choosing her own destiny.”
One more very positive review, by Barry Paris of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, claimed that “in his casting, Mr. Vinterberg opts for edgy”—a “gamble [that] works especially well with kinetic Carey Mulligan as Bathsheba,” who, he continued, “succeeds even better than Julie Christie, whom I loved in John Schlesinger’s underrated 1967 version.” He thought that while “Ms. Christie was all air and water (and sweetly blond),” Mulligan is “all earth and fire (and sultry-dark, as Hardy intended), assertive in farm business and the business of love.” He admired Matthias Schoenaerts for “a depth that belies his male eye-candy exterior” and wondered how “any woman [could] not love this Gabriel.” He found Michael Sheen “deeply moving,” adding that only “Sturridge seems over the top as the diabolically creepy Sgt. Troy.” Paris also praised the film’s artistry and design, claiming that the “camera caresses [Mulligan]” as she carries out farm chores and is illuminated by “the sumptuous sunrises and sunsets of southern England. Fully three-fourths of the picture,” he noted, “was shot outdoors.” He additionally complimented the “fab music” and the movie’s “lustrous sense of time and place” but warned that “the pace is languid and the fireworks more visual than emotional.”
Conclusion
Thomas Vinterberg and his cast and crew had good reason to be proud of the reception their film received from critics. Like practically every other adaptation of a Hardy novel for the “big screen,” this latest Far from the Madding Crowd had received widespread and often enthusiastic praise. Thomas Vinterberg’s movie can inspire thoughtful comparisons and contrasts both with the book itself and with its 1967 predecessor, directed by John Schlesinger. By setting all three works side-by-side, viewers and readers can better appreciate the distinctive traits—and qualities—of each.
