Far from the Madding Crowd 2015

     The setting of this film is Victorian England of 1870.  Bathsheba Everdene is helping her aunt by working on her farm in Dorset.  She meets the new neighbor Gabriel Oak and he asks her to marry him.  She believes this is quite sudden and she really doesn’t know what to say?   Soon after, Bathsheba inherits a farm from her uncle and she leaves to take charge of the property.  Oak has a turn of unexpected bad luck when he loses all his sheep and his farm.  He leaves Dorset, he learns that Bathsheba is looking for a farm boss and he goes to apply. 

     I had forgotten that I had already seen this film in 2015.  As soon as the first tragedy occurred, I remembered that there is one tragedy after another.  The word madding means acting madly, frenzied or maddening.  That probably does describe the main thought of this film?  Almost all the characters are constantly near this feeling?  They are struggling against their aims for their lives and their social circumstances.  One small mistake can turn everything completely in a different direction.  I thought this was interesting and good.  I was drawn into the characters and analyzing their mistakes or choices as the film went along.  4* (I really liked this movie) 

119 min, Drama directed by Thomas Vinterberg with Carey Mulligan, Matthias Schoenaerts, Michael Sheen, Tom Sturridge, Juno Temple, Bradley Hall, Hilton McRae, Jessica Barden, Harry Peacock, Victor McGuire.

Note:  Imdb 7.1 out of 10, 85% critic 75% audience on Rotten Tomatoes, Amazon 4.4* out of 5* with 1205 reviews, Roger Ebert 3*, Metacritic 71 out of 100 with 40 critics 7.5 out of 10 with 59 reviews, The Guardian review by Peter Bradshaw 3* out of 5*.

Special Note:  Filmed in Dorset, Buckinghamshire, Somerset, Osfordshire, England, UK.  All of the cast members are British except for Matthias Schoenaerts, he was born in Antwerp, Belgium.  This movie was filmed in 53 days.  Thomas Hardy took the title from a line in Thomas Gray’s 1751 poem titled Elegy written in a Country Churchyard.  “Far from the Madding crowd’s ignoble strife.”  The first film version of this novel was a silent film released in 1915, exactly 100 years from this version.  There is a 1909 film with the same title but it’s not based on the book, it’s a Thomas Edison comedy.  Other films from Thomas Hardy books are The Claim, Jude, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the d’Ubervilles and Under the Greenwood Tree.  The biblical name of Bathseba is pronounced BathSEba but in this film it is pronounced BathSHAba?