Far from the Madding Crowd (2015)

You won't be disappointed!

The Age of Commercialism

Such a frustrating disappointment

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Left me detached compared to '67 Christie/Stamp/Finch/Bates film. I gave that 8 stars. A scene that seemed to capture the times so beautifully in that version was the meal Bethsheba shares with her workers. There, she sat inside while her staff sat outside like they were at a picnic! In this version it all takes place very quietly in the dark with little obvious joy. Anyhow, worth seeing but watch the Schlesinger film for a better adaptation.

As a huge Hardy fan, I thought this adaption of one of his most popular (and accessible) novels was pretty much faultless. I've noticed a trend with movies over the last few years to roughen up the nineteenth century, to make the characters more naturalistic and it works exceptionally well here. The characters look entirely at home and realistic in their setting and the film is as much a tribute to a vanished, rural world as it is to love. More so, perhaps. Although the adaptation makes Gabriel and Bathsheba's relationship more romantic than it was in the novel (his iconically unromantic line "whenever I look up..." was left out), it is nevertheless not the main delight of this film for me. This movie wonderfully recreates rural life in Dorset, and created a surge of nostalgia about the vanished rhythms of farming life. I highly recommend this film to anyone who enjoys nineteenth century novels, but also to any romantics out there because, of course, Gabriel and Bathsheba's story is heartrending and delightful at the same time.

I am a lover of the version which starred Julie Christie, Peter Finch and the wonderful Alan Bates so it is impossible not to draw comparisons with this new version. Carey Mulligan is a favourite actress of mine but she is not the Bathsheba that Christie was. You could really believe that men would fall head over heels in love with her. Carey Mulligan is just not that beautiful. The new version looks good but again, nowhere near the lyrical beauty of Schlesinger's film. The story is well told but lacking in the power to draw one in like the earlier version. Finch was just superb in the first film and one really felt his anguish and pain due to his love for Bathsheba.

Diane and I watched this engrossing anð captivating movie version of a book that she had read in high school; obviously, we viewed the film at her behest because I avoided the book when it when it appeared on my reading list in my lower class.I mention all of this background to give the readers, such as they may be an idea of why I rated the film as a Ten. I did so because I thought, as well as Diane, that it was a superbly moving film that the Director had rather meticulously adapted from an older book into a faultless adaptation as a brilliant movie.I was unfamiliar with the story in any way so the entire unfolding of the beautiful film was completely new to my philistine ways. The film followed the story line of the book in a journeyman like manner but in a precisely soft adaptation of the book's story line. The dialogue was never arrant or off-putting. In short, it was a wonderful movie that could easily be viewed on several occasions.