Far From the Madding Crowd was Thomas Hardy's breakthrough novel when it was serialized in 1874, and it's probably still his frothiest. (Jude the Obscure: most unfrothy.)
That doesn't necessarily make it light. Thomas Vinterberg's sturdy new film adaptation brings out some of the darker shades, literally and figuratively, in Hardy's proto-feminist tale. Comparisons to Hardy's predecessor Jane Austen remain rampant, and the team behind Madding surely knows there's money in those rolling green English hills.
Hardy's heroine is one Bathsheba Everdene (Carey Mulligan), a tough-minded lass bequeathed a sizable farm by her late uncle. Bathsheba's salt-of-the-earth, all-business approach marks her as unconventional in 19th-century rural England, especially as she rebuffs one suitor after another. "I shouldn't mind being a bride at a wedding," Bathsheba tells the stoic shepherd Gabriel Oak (Matthias Schoenaerts), "if I could be one without having a husband." But the men, including a wealthy widower (Michael Sheen) and a rakish soldier (Tom Sturridge), just keep calling.
The Danish Vinterberg, whose unnerving The Hunt was among the best films of 2013, and cinematographer Charlotte Bruus Christensen conjure wonders of natural lighting that seem effortless but must have been murder to achieve.
When the towering Oak emerges from his home to confront what turns out to be a disaster, we see a dark silhouette against the night sky, the barrel of his rifle barely glinting over his shoulder. Bathsheba encounters the seductive Sergeant Troy in a nocturnal forest as a flickering candle suggests the unstable attraction. Candles and lanterns haven't looked this good since Barry Lyndon.
Far From the Madding Crowd is a muscular, streamlined literary adaptation that manages to find universal and modern appeal in Victorian prose and manners. Bathsheba's mercurial path of self-discovery allows Mulligan to showcase her rapierlike alertness and depth as an actress. (For those who insist on saying she's no Julie Christie, who starred in John Schlesinger's 1967 film adaptation: Only Julie Christie is Julie Christie.) Sheen is a picture of tragic restraint. Schoenaerts is a bit too pure to be true.
Far From the Madding Crowd has two audiences to please. One comes armed with a passion for and knowledge of English literature, and an eagerness to explain what the movie got wrong. The other wants a ripping yarn, a drama of repressed desire and some pretty costumes and scenery. It should be said these audiences can overlap, and only the pickiest of either group should find serious fault with this latest effort.
A final note: Madding is a now-arcane word that means, essentially, frenzied. For years I thought it was Maddening. At least I wasn't an English major. Oh wait. I was.
FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD (B+)
Directed by Thomas Vinterberg. PG-13 (some violence and sexuality). 119 mins. At the Landmark Magnolia and the Angelika Plano.
