Call it an adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s breakthrough “Victorian realist” romance novel, call it a remake of John Schlesinger’s 1967 film starring Julie Christie, but whatever you do, don’t call Thomas Vinterberg’s Far from the Madding Crowd derivative. Like Hardy and Schlesinger before him, Vinterberg uses the relatively straightforward tale of an independent-minded woman caught between three suitors as a means to explore broader issues of societal pressures, social expectations, institutionalized gender roles and the competing desires for self-reliance and companionship. While certainly not the only story to balance politics and love, Hardy’s classic tale is celebrated for its ability to value both in equal measure, being sweet rather than precious, being socially aware without a hint of didacticism.
It is in this aspect that Vinterberg’s film is a marked improvement on Schlesinger’s already respectable adaptation, which placed far too much emphasis on passion and character tropes. Vinterberg’s take on protagonist Bathsheba Everdene does not reduce her to a series of labels—feisty, independent, what have you—for the purposes of making her more familiar to audiences. Miss Everdene (Carey Mulligan), as most men call her, is an unmarried young woman who has inherited her uncle’s farm. She is determined to be as effective as he was, refusing lower prices for the same grain at the local market and earning the respect of the farmhands. Along the way, she is romantically pursued by her wealthy neighbor (Michael Sheen), her handsome and trustworthy employee (Matthias Schoenaerts) and the brash soldier who literally crashes into her one night (Tom Sturridge). Each man has something to offer, yet fully accepting any of them would require sacrificing a part of her own identity in order to be under her husband’s wing.
Refreshingly, Vinterberg’s Everdene is not defined by her characteristics; she’s not a romantically cynical loner or quirky tomboy who needs to grow up. Mulligan’s performance depicts a woman who is under immense pressure and for whom the traditional confines of Victorian social order don’t work. Her carefully chosen words and firm body language capture the complexity of her character’s journey; she is not merely a woman who cannot make up her mind between three good-looking suitors with something different to offer her.
Nor are the suitors reduced to archetypes designed to teach Bathsheba and the audience a lesson about choosing between your mind and your heart. Two of the men, both hardworking and honest farmers, genuinely care for her well-being, yet their advances unwittingly involve some form of ownership over her, a problem that arises from how their world has taught them how to appeal to women rather than a desire to make her their property.
The third man, the soldier, has no land, property or money to offer and is therefore more appealing, yet having never had genuine responsibility in his life makes him a poor husband. A lesser film would have funneled this conflict into a hammy moral, but Far from the Madding Crowd is intelligent enough to understand that the choice between pleasant servitude and unhappy independence is society’s failing, not Bathsheba’s.
If all this political stuff is turning you off from seeing this movie, it shouldn’t. It is a love story with genuine tension and a satisfying conclusion, it simply does not ignore the significance of societal forces in romantic interactions. Vinterberg’s naturalistic eye, which he developed as a co-founder of the Danish anti-production value Dogme 95 movement, is at the beating heart and active mind of Far from the Madding Crowd. The idyllic beauty of the English countryside is on full display, indifferent to the laws of property and social classes of humankind, a natural state that we would perhaps be better off returning to.
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