See it at the Movies

FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD

with Joyce & Don Fowler
Posted 5/21/15

* * * * (Joyce) 

* * * ½ (Don)

(Hardy’s romantic novel)

Thomas Hardy’s 1870s romantic novel gets a good and close-to-the-book interpretation, thanks to Carey Mulligan’s take on its …

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See it at the Movies

FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD

Posted

* * * * (Joyce) 

* * * ½ (Don)

(Hardy’s romantic novel)

Thomas Hardy’s 1870s romantic novel gets a good and close-to-the-book interpretation, thanks to Carey Mulligan’s take on its heroine, Bathsheba Everdene.

Bathseba is an independent soul, running her inherited farm with a firm but friendly hand while dealing with three suitors who want nothing more than to marry her.

Matthias Schoenaerts plays Gabriel, her sheep farmer neighbor who loses his land when his dog leads the flock over a cliff.

Bathsheba hires him and he becomes her protector. She refuses his advances and those of her new neighbor (Michael Sheen) who immediately falls under her spell and asks her to marry him.

A handsome young soldier comes upon the scene becoming the third person who seeks her hand. She succumbs to him, but he turns out to have lots of baggage.

That’s about a third of the plot of this romantic 19th century soap opera that is filled with lusting and longing, with enough plot twists to fill three books. I remember doing a paper on Hardy’s “Jude the Obscure” when I was in college, where the popular author’s romantically imaginative novels were big hits. While I find him, and the movie, to be a bit too much at times, Joyce, the romantic, loved the story and the ending.

I won’t go as far as to say it is a woman’s movie, but anyone who has enjoyed reading Hardy or novels of this genre will surely enjoy the two-hour movie.

A friend asked me, “Shouldn’t it be “Far From the Maddening Crowd?”  My college notes tell me that madding meant frenzied. Most of the characters were just that.

Rated PG-13, with some subtle sexual overtones. 

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