The story of Bathsheba Everdene and her three marriage proposals has now been told on screen again. Screenwriter David Nicholls and director Thomas Vinterberg have a mighty act to follow with their adaptation of Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd. John Schlesinger’s 1967 version has attained a classic status on its own account. They take a fair stab with this good-looking but eccentrically cast adaptation. Where Schlesinger loved the landscape and the textures of the outdoors, Vinterberg’s emphasis is on intimacy and interior locations.
The famous swordplay scene is repositioned from an open hillside to a woodland in the gloaming. Carey Mulligan is Bathsheba, the headstrong young woman in late 19th-century Dorset who is to inherit a handsome farm. Her face has a pinched girlish prettiness combined with a shrewd, slightly school-mistressy intelligence – the sort of face that can appear very young and quite old at the same time. She has a stronger, fiercer, more concerted presence than the ethereally beautiful Julie Christie in the same part. There is an outstanding supporting turn from Michael Sheen as Mr Boldwood, the neighbouring landowner who is to become tragically and self-laceratingly infatuated with Bathsheba, after she sends him an insincere Valentine card. As the conceited Sergeant Troy, Tom Sturridge looks the part without conveying his febrile, egocentric quality – although the role is arguably underwritten, and Troy’s big fairground scene is cut. And the part of the devoted shepherd Gabriel Oak has mystifyingly been given to the Belgian star Matthias Schoenaerts, who is uncomfortable in an English-language role. An interesting, heartfelt but flawed Hardy adaptation.
