Far From the Maddening Crowd

Overview

While Far from the Madding Crowd is primarily a romance/drama, it could also be considered feminist cinema, for the defiance and brilliance for the lead character Bathsheba Everdene (skilfully played by Carey Mulligan). Based on the novel by Thomas Hardy, and adapted for film by David Nicholls, Far from the Madding Crowd is a wonderful story of one woman's struggle for independence in Victorian England.

Directors Thomas Vinterberg (The Hunt, Submarino) and David Nicholls (One Day, Great Expectations) shaped this story to focus on the themes of female struggle within the sexist society of Victorian England. The far more complex multi-narrative of the original book is stripped back to focus in on Bathsheba, and we see most of the events of the film from her perspective. In doing this Vinterberg and Nicholls have created a film that runs to a comfortable to just under two hours while still facilitating a deeply personal exploration of the themes of love, sexuality and freedom. The film was also a visual pleasure, with Charlotte Bruus Christensen taking artistic license with the cinematography to depict the English countryside as bright, sunny and impossibly luscious.

The characterisations that each of the key actors brought to their performances drove the story onwards and enhanced many of the themes inherent to the story. Carey Mulligan played a strong and beautiful Bathsheba with enough charm and humour to be a deeply empathetic lead character. Variously each of Bathsheba's male suitors - Gabriel Oak (Matthias Schoenaerts), William Boldwood (Michael Sheen), Frank Troy (Tom Sturridge) - were in turn stoic, sexy, and charmingly hopeless. The male archetypes of each of these characters (the heart-of-gold farmer, the sad old millionaire, and the sleazy soldier) risk slipping into caricature occasionally throughout the film, however the performances are good enough to not feel like over-the-top melodrama that you often get within the Victorian romance/drama genre.

This is a great film for anyone who loves a good Victorian drama but is bored of weak and poorly developed female characters that too often plague this genre.