Far From the Madding Crowd

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Thomas Vinterberg/Starring: Carey Mulligan, Matthias Schoenaerts, Michael Sheen, Tom Sturridge and Juno Temple

With costume dramas, one never knows what one will get. Will the film be a dry, airless Merchant/Ivory production or will it be a visually sumptuous delight, like Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility? It's nearly impossible to predict. But with a talented director like Thomas Vinterberg (Celebration, The Hunt) behind the camera, one can be sure the adaptation will be anything but two hours of stilted dialogue and ladies with bonnets resting daintily on their silky curls.

Given the fact the film is an interpretation of Thomas Hardy's classic novel, we have a good idea of what we will see. But as it's heroine, Bathsheba Everdene (an excellent Carey Mulligan) is keen to express in the film; "It is my intention to astonish you all." One could just as easily believe the mission statement belongs to Vinterberg. In sharing his heroine's resolution; his Far From the Madding Crowd achieves nothing less. Though other versions of Hardy's novel have found their way to the screen, Vinterberg's makes its own statement, visually and dramatically.

Set in rural England in the 1870s', the story's main persona--Bathsheba, inherits a manor; replete with a considerable staff. Bathsheba is hardly a typical landowner for the times, as we see when she attends an auction to sell the bounty of her farm. The exclusively male buyers and sellers look askance at Bathsheba; almost insulted by a woman's presence. But Bathsheba is no shrinking flower nor anyone's patsy; she proves to be a shrewd business person, as one buyer discovers.

We also meet Gabriel Oak (the limitless Matthias Schoenaerts), a hard-working farmer whose property abuts Bathsheba's. Gabriel meets his comely neighbor one day while tending to his vast flock of sheep and is instantly smitten. He wastes little time proposing marriage to her in his forthright manner, which startles Bathsheba. Though she isn't immune to Gabriel's rugged handsomeness, she is quick to assert her staunch independence which comes with an aversion to marriage. In a coquettish moment, she tells Gabriel that he lacks the means to tame her. Dejected, Gabriel walks away.

Not soon after, Gabriel experiences a devastating loss when one of his dogs drives his entire flock off a cliff before he can intervene. An image of golden, morning sunlight bathing a beach littered with sheep carcasses is a fascinating juxtaposition of beauty and grisly death.

Unable to recover financially from his loss, Gabriel is forced to sell his property, leaving him with little choice but to earn a wage on another farm. That he finds himself a shepherd on Bathsheba's estate is one of the story's bitter ironies.

But Gabriel isn't the only landowner who succumbs to Bathsheba's charms, for a William Boldwood (Michael Sheen, terrific as always), whose sprawling estate betrays considerable bounty, also wastes little time proposing marriage. Like Gabriel, William's offer of comfort and prosperity is countered by Bathsheba's articulated disdain for marriage.

Though Bathsheba seems steadfast in her determination to be unwed, a young, handsome soldier named Francis Troy (Tom Sturridge) changes her mind. Startling Bathsheba one night in the forest, he immediately makes his attraction known, causing her to shrink from his advances. But in the days ahead, his good looks and seductive power overcome her, which make marriage inevitable. Gabriel, ever the friend, warns her about Francis; knowing something of his past. Thoroughly charmed by the young soldier, Bathsheba dismisses his reservations.

Earlier in the story, we watched as Francis' wedding to a young beauty named Fanny Robin (Juno Temple) was aborted when the bride inadvertently arrived at the wrong church. Believing himself to be rejected, Francis leaves the church in humiliation and heartbreak. Knowing this, it is easy to regard Bathsheba's marriage to Francis with trepidation.

Gabriel's warning proves to be prophetic, for Francis becomes the most undesirable husband. Showing little but contempt for farm-life and frittering Bathsheba's income on gambling, Francis' life becomes one of dissipation and idleness. But a chance meeting in town with his erstwhile fiance, Fanny Robbin, reawakens his passion for the young woman. Fanny tells Francis the baby she carries is his, which spurs him to action. He promises to help rescue her from the loathsome mendicant's life in which she finds herself. In promising Fanny money to relieve her direly stressed condition, Francis runs afoul of Bathsheba, who questions his need for more money.

As Bathsheba's marriage deteriorates, Francis disappears, leaving everyone to think the worst. Believing Bathsheba to be eligible, Boldwood throws an elaborate party to renew his courtship but his hopes are dashed when Bathsheba reiterates her desire not to marry him. Outside the party, Bathsheba discovers a figure emerging from the darkness, which we see is Francis. Unchastened by his disappearance, his aggressive demands of Bathsheba lead to a violent confrontation that prompts a despondent Boldwood to take desperate action, with catastrophic consequences.

I fell into Vinterberg's story and kept falling. He did astonish and in many ways. Beautiful camera work, performances from several very fine actors and a masterful use of color made Vinterberg's film a fully imagined and aesthetically realized work.

I found Mulligan to be a superb Bathsheba. Mulligan has the kind of face that would drown in innocence if not for fiercely intelligent eyes to counter the onslaught. Bathsheba is at once aware of herself and her unique position of privilege in a male-dominated society but is also naive when it comes to matters of the heart, as her terrible relationship with Francis attests. Mulligan captures this contradiction beautifully.

Schoenaerts is quickly becoming one of cinema's premier actors. In the past few years, I've seen him in wildly divergent roles: as a pugilist in Rust and Bone, as the heavy in last year's The Drop and now as the Job-like Gabriel Oak. What is particularly astonishing about Schoenaerts is his ability to affect accents without a trace of his native Belgian in his voice.

Does Bathsheba maintain her independence after battling for its preservation for so long? Does Hardy and hence, Vinterberg, fail her by having her become love's prey? Does she betray her ideals? Though the story finds a happy ending, I couldn't help but think so, as I'm sure other movie-goers will as well.

I doubt Far From the Madding Crowd will make much of a splash, but I found it absorbing and nicely done. I was glad to be spared the Masterpiece Theater treatment; its cinematic value was very conspicuous. See it while you can in a theater before the T.V. screen denigrates everything that gives it distinction.

Effie Gray

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Richard Laxton/Starring: Dakota Fanning, Emma Thompson, Greg Wise, Claudia Cardinale, Derek Jacobi, Julie Walters, Tom Sturridge, Robbie Coltrane, David Suchet and James Fox

Effie Gray, the one-time wife of 19th century eminent British art critic and author John Ruskin, is the subject of Richard Laxton's film, which might make a suitable companion piece to Mr. Turner, Mike Leigh's recent J.W. Turner biopic. Both men were contemporaries and Ruskin is credited for championing Turner's work. But the most conspicuous similarity between the two were their troubled relationships with women. While Turner experiences with the fairer sex were often tempestuous, Ruskin remained emotionally detached and almost cruel in his relationship with Effie Gray, as Laxton's film attests.

Laxton's film on Ruskin's suffering wife tells her story while illuminating the less flattering aspects of her husband's private life and his disturbingly odd relationship with his parents.

In an early scene, we see Effie Gray (Dakota Fanning) and John Ruskin (Greg Wise) in their post-nuptial ride to the Ruskin residence, where John shares a home with his parents; Margaret (Julie Walters) and his father, the elder John (David Suchet). In a moment that foreshadows the troubles to come, Effie presents herself to John in their wedding night bedchamber, only to be looked upon with disgust.

Ignoring her husband's odd behavior, Effie makes at attempt at being a useful, dutiful wife by assuming a role as amanuensis to John; only to be scolded by her mother-in-law. Margaret's harsh, dismissive rebuke sends a clear message to Effie that her help is neither adequate nor needed. Disparaged and feeling the crushing ennui of domestic idleness, Effie makes another attempt at being a homemaker. She deliberately rips one of John's shirts to provide herself an opportunity to mend it; a desperate effort that earns the maid's scorn, who treats Effie like an impertinent child. Unloved by her husband and denied any meaningful involvement in domestic affairs, Effie begins to feel the Ruskin home's noxious effects.

Compounding her misery are John's parents, who become increasingly cold to Effie while displaying a strange, neurotic over-protectiveness of their son.

Feeling stifled by her in-laws and virtually ignored by her husband, Effie finds herself subject to other oppressive behavior, this time at a dinner hosted in the Ruskin home for artists and intellectuals. During a dinner table debate, Effie asks a question of her husband, who stands before the mostly male gathering in a professorial manner. Her question is met with silent disdain--the severest her husband's as she abashedly resumes her silence. But a guest, Lady Eastlake (Emma Thompson), wife of the powerful art patron Sir Charles Eastlake (James Fox), comes to her rescue; complimenting Effie for her intelligence and perspicacity. The two take to one another which prompts Lady Eastlake to suggest the Ruskins host she and her husband for dinner.

In the interim, Effie is subjected to Margaret Ruskin's dubious attentions. Her mother-in-law begins to prescribe a strange, possibly harmful concoction of her own design for Effie's worsening mental and physical condition. The physical and mental toll the Ruskin family exacts on Effie leaves her feeling ill; a possible psycho-somatic affliction that Lady Eastlake recognizes when she and her husband arrive for dinner. Sensitive to the Ruskin home's ill-effects on Effie, Lady Eastlake becomes the young woman's sympathetic ally.

And as Effie's unhappiness continues, she begins to notice John's odd refusal to consummate their marriage and his tendency to self-stimulate; a disquieting, near-ascetic idiosyncrasy that contributes to the marriage's toxicity.

Though John Ruskin is a key figure in the story and a personality of scholarly fame, it is Effie's resilience and integrity that is the real focus. We feel the weight of Victorian social strictures on Effie Gray as life with her husband and the elder Ruskins become unbearable. It is made all the more difficult when a painter in John's artistic circle, Everett Millais, falls in love with Effie, which incurs her husband's scorn and jealous suspicion. Learning that divorce is an arduous pursuit for any woman in Victorian England, Effie pursues it nevertheless, which proves to be a significant turning point in her life.

Fanning, hardly an obvious choice to play Effie Gray, handles the role with assurance, allowing her ferociously innocent face to mask a steely resolve. Greg Wise--the memorably villainous Willoughby in Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility, makes Ruskin a callous but pitiable figure and executes his performance well. As John was a pawn to his parents, whose draconian methods of child-rearing contributed both to his success and to his unhealthy regard for women, Wise shows us a man of towering intellect and frail psyche.

Laxton, a television veteran, shows patience with the material, never hurrying Effie's story along. Some lovely pans and wide-shots of Scottish highlands and lochs share screen-time with interiors refreshingly shorn of the Masterpiece Theater aesthetic to which some Victorian period pieces are sometimes prey.

Thompson is an accomplished script-scribe, having won an Oscar for her adaptation of Jane Austen, and again demonstrates her writerly acumen with a tight, original story with terrific dialogue and historical fidelity.

Effie Gray is nothing astonishing but it is well done and stimulating in its own, modest way. It doesn't sentimentalize Gray's story nor does it render her a martyr. I liked the film but won't rhapsodize over it.