Far From The Madding Crowd (12A.)
Directed by Thomas Vinterberg.
Starring Carey Mulligan, Mattias Schoenaerts, Michael Sheen, Tom Sturridge, Jessica Bardem and Juno Temple. 119 mins.
A strange ritual happens whenever a screen performer of talent is unearthed – they get shoved into everything and after approximately eight major film roles in two years you've forgotten what it was that caught your attention in the first place. In the latest adaptation of this Thomas Hardy's tragic love story the roles of Bathsheba Everdeen and Gabriel Oak are assigned to Mulligan and Schoenaerts, two performers who are experienced in overexposure.
For Schoenaerts this is his monthly film appearance. His breakthrough was the fierce Belgium drama Bullhead, which nobody saw except everybody who needed to, and those that saw have been scrambling to get him into every film going ever since. In American films he seems to the neighbourhood born, but English roles really put the stilts up him.
Mulligan hasn't been in a film for a year and a half and I think we both needed the break. You can see afresh the qualities that made her such a revelation in An Education (and that Doctor Who episode.) Few performers radiate life and vitality like she does, it practically bursts out of the screen. Those big rosy cheeks of hers glow fiercely for the entire two hours. And she needs every bit of that glow to play a woman that three men ask to marry, more or less the moment they set eyes on her. She captivates attention but ultimately I'm not sure she convinces. She makes Everdeen an incorrigible flirt but when she has to show a bit of steel, of independence it just seems like contrariness, and her little coquettish smile just comes over as self satisfied. She isn't a strong enough figure to seem to warrant centre point in Hardy's great machination of improbable coincidence and “oh fancy seeing you here, and now of all times,” tragic ironies.
The modern trend in costume dramas is to give them a modern day vitality, as if they'd been filmed on location in the 19th century. Vinterberg's (Festen, The Hunt) take on Hardy doesn't really offer that, but neither does it offer up the more traditional pastorals pleasures of the historical drama. Yes, the Dorset scenery looks great, but not quite in the lush painterly way that will make the film worth watching just for that alone. Yes, the performances are good, but not utterly compelling. The moment when Sergeant Troy (Sturridge) dazzles Bathsheba with his swordplay in the wood at night has a bit of dash and daring to it, but mostly the film plods earnestly and respectfully along.
It seems to me that Vinterberg has turned in a crib sheet version of Far From the Madding Crowd. By the end of it you will know what happens in Hardy's book, but not why readers have flocked to the book for over 140 years.
Far From The Madding Crowd (12A.)
Directed by Thomas Vinterberg.
Starring Carey Mulligan, Mattias Schoenaerts, Michael Sheen, Tom Sturridge, Jessica Bardem and Juno Temple. 119 mins.
A strange ritual happens whenever a screen performer of talent is unearthed – they get shoved into everything and after approximately eight major film roles in two years you've forgotten what it was that caught your attention in the first place. In the latest adaptation of this Thomas Hardy's tragic love story the roles of Bathsheba Everdeen and Gabriel Oak are assigned to Mulligan and Schoenaerts, two performers who are experienced in overexposure.
For Schoenaerts this is his monthly film appearance. His breakthrough was the fierce Belgium drama Bullhead, which nobody saw except everybody who needed to, and those that saw have been scrambling to get him into every film going ever since. In American films he seems to the neighbourhood born, but English roles really put the stilts up him.
Mulligan hasn't been in a film for a year and a half and I think we both needed the break. You can see afresh the qualities that made her such a revelation in An Education (and that Doctor Who episode.) Few performers radiate life and vitality like she does, it practically bursts out of the screen. Those big rosy cheeks of hers glow fiercely for the entire two hours. And she needs every bit of that glow to play a woman that three men ask to marry, more or less the moment they set eyes on her. She captivates attention but ultimately I'm not sure she convinces. She makes Everdeen an incorrigible flirt but when she has to show a bit of steel, of independence it just seems like contrariness, and her little coquettish smile just comes over as self satisfied. She isn't a strong enough figure to seem to warrant centre point in Hardy's great machination of improbable coincidence and “oh fancy seeing you here, and now of all times,” tragic ironies.
The modern trend in costume dramas is to give them a modern day vitality, as if they'd been filmed on location in the 19th century. Vinterberg's (Festen, The Hunt) take on Hardy doesn't really offer that, but neither does it offer up the more traditional pastorals pleasures of the historical drama. Yes, the Dorset scenery looks great, but not quite in the lush painterly way that will make the film worth watching just for that alone. Yes, the performances are good, but not utterly compelling. The moment when Sergeant Troy (Sturridge) dazzles Bathsheba with his swordplay in the wood at night has a bit of dash and daring to it, but mostly the film plods earnestly and respectfully along.
It seems to me that Vinterberg has turned in a crib sheet version of Far From the Madding Crowd. By the end of it you will know what happens in Hardy's book, but not why readers have flocked to the book for over 140 years.
