8/10

The latest big screen adaptation for Thomas Hardy profiles his most prolific female character in search of the man brave enough to tame her. “Far From the Madding Crowd” stars Carey Mulligan as Bathsheba Everdene, an inheriting farm owner who attracts three very different suitors: Gabriel Oak (Matthias Schoenaerts), a sheep farmer, captivated by her fetching willfulness; Frank Troy (Tom Sturridge), a handsome and reckless Sergeant; and William Boldwood (Michael Sheen), a prosperous and mature bachelor. The film follows her tribulations as a female business owner, as well as her search for love and respect in a man who will honor her personality traits. This movie is a prime example of what authors like Nicolas Sparks should be gunning for when adapting their screenplays. The movie builds it’s characters as equals, it casts the setting in different landscapes of the victorian era, and it never has to rely heavily on passionate scenes to get across the chemistry from it’s two protagonists. Above everything else, i love “Madding Crowd” for it’s presentation of a positive and strong female presence during a time when women were subject to houseworkers only. The movie’s ability to make a story like this relatable in 2015 is what really captivated me and kept me interested in a plot that is easy enough to cast. It’s all about a love triange, and that is something that we have seen so many times, but what makes it work is that you have the female playing the role that the male would normally play in these sappy overdone tellings. She is the one with the power, the money, and the attention of her male suitors. The film also refuses to be held down by the lack of entertainment value from it’s setting. That’s not to say that a movie set in this age will automatically be boring, but it needs a strong script to make it entertaining for a younger audience, and boy does it succeed. The film has a few twists and turns melodramatically that bring out the best of performances from Mulligan. I have always been a big fan of Carey, and Everdene is perhaps her strongest challenge communicating a woman so powerful in an era where her beauty is her judge, jury, and executioner. Without ever having to lose her cool, she relates never needing a man to be complete with a calm strength that keeps her from ever looking like an imature woman stereotypical for these films. The only small criticism i had with the movie came in it’s final act where everything is wrapped up a little too conveniently. Characters tend to change to benefit the script, and i think something like that could’ve been left in editing dust. It’s a small critique for a movie that kept me interested in the romantic entanglements of Hardy’s story. Much respect to Director Thomas Vinterberg (The Hunt) for scouting a shooting location (Buckinghamshire, England) well represented of times during the 19th century. The film is visually stunning for it’s wide angle shots of fields as far as the eye can see, the stonewalls in the villages, and the strawhouse structures that were the best in animal housing that money could offer in such a time. He also brings the most out of actors like Schoenaerts, who has been limited to a tight lipped villain in most of his roles to this point. I recommend this film to everyone who always question what my biggest problem with Nicolas Sparks films are. Like it’s main character, it’s a film that refuses to ever be tamed by the challenging up hill battle with the genre that it faced.