Far from the Madding Crowd

I first saw this movie in 1968 when I was 14 as an assignment for school. The other day I saw it again late one Saturday night on my local PBS station. I remembered how entranced I was in the mood and the music, and that was still the same now. The movie was nominated for a Golden Globe as best picture(drama) and it won for best score.

But after living for 30 years I really see it as a great story about the relationship choices we make in life. It really made me reflect on my own choices in life.

The main character is played by Julie Christy age 26, who is the owner of a sheep farm in England. She is very beautiful and more than one man is in love with her. I won't say which man she marries but even after the movie was over I felt perplexed as to any one right outcome. That we all make choices at different times in our lives and sometimes the reasons are the same and sometimes they are different. Sometimes we make emotional choices and sometimes intellectual ones. But they are all choices we have to live with.

The cast and the fact that I love the book(possibly my personal favourite of Thomas Hardy's work) were what drove me into seeing this Far From the Madding Crowd. And I personally really liked it, though I can see why people might not. It does have a couple of cliché moments and the film is overlong. On the other hand, the film looks gorgeous, the scenery is evocative and the cinematography positively shimmers. The music is hauntingly beautiful, the script is literate and thoughtful and the complex story unfolds slowly and deliberately, is faithful in detail and spirit to the book(in the film's favour rather than against it) and several scenes such as the scene in the graveyard have their impact. The direction from John Schlesinger is fine, I can see where some are coming from when they say his personality doesn't come through as it does in his other work but considering how different the story and his directing style is that's understandable, while the characters still have credibility and complexity if even more so in the book. Julie Christie is an affecting and spirited Bathsheba, Terence Stamp is appropriately soldierly and crusty, Alan Bates does down-to-earth very effectively and Peter Finch devastates as the tragic Boldwood. In conclusion, maybe not for everybody but I really liked it for mainly the cast, visuals and music. 8/10 Bethany Cox

If you are wanting fast action and thrills then this film is not for you, however, if you enjoy a good drama with a haunting score then look no further. Bathsheba Everdine (Christie)has three suitors in the form of the dashing Troy(Stamp) the dependable Oak (Bates) and the brooding/obsessed Boldwood (Finch). The story revolves around her relationship with each of these three men with rural Victorian England as the backdrop. I particularly enjoyed Terrence Stamp's performance as Sergeant Troy whose real love is Fanny Robbin and not Bathsheba. Richard Rodney Bennett creates a lovely haunting soundtrack which conjures up the English countryside. A smashing film!!

What a treat to see an adaption of this marvellous but hard going book, of course it's always worth the effort to read Hardy, but it takes getting into, you have to be in the right mind frame, so dramatisations of his wonderfully rich characters are always wonderful to watch, and open up his work to a wider audience I should imagine.

This film in particular was pretty true to the script, if a little condensed, in places. I felt Alan Bates was just fantastic on screen, but probably had the right amount of charm and screen magnetism for the box office, but a little too much to be a true Farmer Oak as described by Hardy, what women in her right mind would ever turn him down,being so sweet and looking like that, I must watch more of his films.

Everyone else was just brilliant as well, and it was lovely to see the beautiful Dorset I visit often so on the big screen and note it really hasn't changed that much at all since the filming in the 60's.

An excellent film, don't miss it !!!

There's a man or two who've taken quite a shine, they want to be your love, eternally entwine, one's a shepherd who has nowt, the t'other carries lots of clout, but desires from your side, just don't align. Then a soldier takes a glance and your enraptured, taking all you have to give and you've been captured, you're in love, and now so happy, you get wed, it's rather snappy, that's when ties begin to break, becoming fractured. Soon the man who you have loved, leaves you in tears, as he vanishes, dissolves and disappears, opens a door for the rich neighbour, who wants to offer you his sabre, and is prepared to wait a while, a long six years.

Fabulous performances by some rather splendid actors in a tale that engages and engulfs.