Strength and Weakness: FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD

Far From the Madding Crowd is a handsome literary adaptation. The surface sheen is impeccable, with gorgeous colors – cinematographer Charlotte Bruus Christensen provides the greenest greens and reddest reds this side of Technicolor – and convincing 19th century detail. Who would’ve thought something so sumptuous could come from Thomas Vinterberg, the Dogme 95 co-founder who has previously given us upsetting dramas of abuse shot in digital smears (The Celebration) or austere pale shudders (The Hunt)? This is a richly textured Great Illustrated Classics sort of film, David Nicholls’ script collapsing the plot details and character motivations from Thomas Hardy’s classic serialized novel, smoothing out the structure to make it fit into a two-hour package. Vinterberg moves through the adaptation, hitting the highlights of the narrative’s emotional beats while wisely keeping the focus on the scenery and cast. He’s content to condense and visualize a story better told in novel form. A bit more interpretive intent could’ve elevated the effort, but what’s here is respectably effective.

What could’ve been a glossy gist of Hardy’s plot is given some depth by the tremendously talented cast. They provide a pivot point from which the audience can turn the thin surface on its side and glimpse the complexity within. (In other words, it won’t lead students too far astray if they misguidedly attempt a book report based on this film alone.) Each performance suggests emotional currents and historical context the condensed motivations don’t enliven in and of themselves. At the center of the proceedings is Carey Mulligan, a performer seemingly built for period pieces. She’s at her best (An Education, Never Let Me Go, The Great Gatsby, and so on) when she can play a woman struggling against the constraints of what a society expects her to be. Here, as Bathsheba Everdene, a young woman in the mid-1800s with only an education to her name who suddenly inherits a farm, she plays a great deal of determination. She’s taking charge, running the farm, willing to ruffle feathers of grumpy men.

But she’s also dealing with a variety of potential suitors, and must decide whether a reliable farmer fallen on bad times (Matthias Schoenaerts), a well-off older fellow (Michael Sheen), or a passionate soldier (Tom Sturridge), is worthy of her time and affections. They represent three very different kinds of men, the strong silent type, the lonely graying bachelor, and the fiery slimeball. Each actor plays the type to strong effect, finding nicely individualized chemistry with Mulligan. One seems a natural pairing, and so becomes a lovely throughline of smoldering unrequited love, a fine underplayed romance and a good way to renew your crushes on the participants. The other two men present a variety of complications. The plot moves along in a structure close to the novel’s original serialized nature, delaying the inevitable for the sake of melodrama. There’s not quite enough psychological underpinning in the script to sell the developments – especially a marriage decision with only a nice swordplay-as-foreplay scene to explain – but the actors make it work anyway.

Vinterberg and crew do a fine job creating the sense of place necessary for their story. It’s a time when women were allowed some agency, and yet still beholden to a society placing propriety and prosperity above personhood. She’s forced to consider economics as much as emotions when contemplating a relationship. Marriages are mergers. Betting on the wrong man can sink her solvency. A dashing man with a good pitch can turn into a lousy husband who would literally bet the farm, leaving them in financial and marital ruin. This recognition simmers in Mulligan’s eyes as she tries to do what’s best for the farm and its employees without shortchanging her own happiness. She and the supporting cast inhabit their characters' dilemmas with appealing conviction. Because the central interpersonal currents run strong, and the production values are high, the CliffsNotes to which they’re deployed doesn't seem so bad.

Twenty Days in the Life: ONE DAY

You pick your friends, or so the saying goes, but that’s not entirely true, is it? Circumstance, coincidence and closeness play a role in friendship as well so that it’s quite possible you can look back upon a time in your life and discover that you were drawn into a friendship that you didn’t value until that person was already gone. Such is the story of Emma (Anne Hathaway) and Dexter (Jim Sturgess), two acquaintances who become sort-of-friends only to circle around each other, flitting in and out of the other’s life, for the better part of twenty years, flirting, toying, yearning all the while to become more than friends.

We first encounter the two of them thrown together on the night of their graduation from Edinburgh University in 1988. They’re in a group of drunken revelers who stumble through town, but slowly, two by two, the graduates peel off from the main group. Emma and Dexter end up spending time together and then parting ways. Through the rest of One Day, we will check in on these two characters every July 15th for two decades. Sometimes they are together. Other times, the day passes without them even thinking of one another. This is ostensibly a romance, presented with a shameless gimmick, but it’s presented in such a low-key, casually unimportant way that the artifice of it all is hidden beneath the dullness.

By giving us only one day per year, the little snippets of passing time accumulate slowly into a big picture, but there’s also a lot of exposition that must be shoved into what little time we have to spend with these people each year. Emma struggles in her twenties, but then finds some professional success. Dexter finds near-immediate professional success, but he’s just as lost as Emma in his twenties, the sense of floundering aimlessly only growing as he finds early success slipping away. There are two full human lives on display for us to watch but we get only glimpses, leaving the impression that the better story is often unfolding on the days we are not privy to.

I found myself wondering if the film would be better, more powerful and emotional, if we got to see more of these characters. Hathaway and Sturgess do fine, intimately textured work, but there’s a sense of the whole production struggling under the weight (or rather, lack thereof) of so much thinness. I got a sense that the actors know more about who these characters are then the film allows them to express. Even supporting characters like Dexter’s mother, played by the reliable Patricia Clarkson, seem to fade away, taking potential for deepening the film’s texture with them. Adapted by David Nicholls from his own bestselling novel, unread by me, this is a prime example of a concept that I’d imagine could work better with the nuance and detail capable in text. Filmed, there’s far too much telling instead of showing.

As it plods forward, the plot of One Day seems to stretch thinner and thinner. Director Lone Scherfig, of the well-acted and Oscar-nominated An Education from a couple of years ago, coaches some decent acting but has a rather perfunctory visual style here and a flatness of pace that works to dull the emotions. The years stamp onto the screen with each passing day, allowing me all too much time to contemplate just how much longer I’d be sitting in the theater, struggling to get on the film’s wavelength. Late in the film, when one character suddenly dies, I found myself profoundly unmoved. But then, in the final stretch, the plot folds over upon itself and gains some shallow depth that is faintly effective and affecting. By then, though, it was too little too late.