“Far from the Madding Crowd” to the ball missed opportunities – Les Echos

Far from the Madding Crowd (Thomas Vinterberg with Carrey Mulligan, Matthias Schoenaerts, Tom Sturridge. 1 h 59.)

fleecy and peaceful cottages Hills, we are in the English countryside in the late XIX ^th century. Bathsheba Everdene is a young woman educated but poor. She refused the advances of Gabriel Oake, a gruff but friendly shepherd who has a little money before him.

By a twist of fate, the situation will be reversed. She inherited the farm from a distant uncle, while Gabriel loses little money he had. He still loves although it has become a woman out of her reach that attracts wealthy bachelors in the area.

Thomas Hardy novel, published in 1874, “Far from the Madding Crowd” was adapted by John Schlesinger in 1967 with Julie Christie and Alan Bates. Thomas Vinterberg chose a classic approach here. Young Director of the Danish photo, Charlotte Bruss Christensen makes a nice job of illumination: each shot opens like a Pre-Raphaelite painting, with the right amount of warm sun caressing clearings. From start to finish, the film thus cheminera the edge of kitsch, without skidding. Who wants to be carried away, the ride turns dizzying. This scenario offers Carrey Mulligan an exceptional role which she will go through several strata of society and various ages. The actress of “Drive” and “Shame” subtly plays a fragile physical and authoritarian diction, harbor Lady and a girl look. Matthias Schoenaerts, the Belgian actor of “Rust and Bone”, blends easily into its British-shepherd character. Mute and massive, it has something of an iceberg about to capsize.

“Far from the Madding Crowd” holds especially by the beautiful story of Thomas Hardy, lament for a life that tells us that destiny can be just that a series of missed opportunities.

Strange fate as that of Thomas Vinterberg. There are twenty, this young Danes founded the “Dogme95 manifesto” with some comrades of drinking, including Lars von Trier. Their goal was to forget any aesthetic embellishment to reach the largest formal count. It was under this banner that he realized in 1998 a bitter and extraordinary film: “Festen”. Vinterberg seems to flee his masterpiece by dialing a farthest possible ambitions cinema debut. “Far from the Madding Crowd” is his eighth film, the most successful of its post-Dogme years.

Adrien Gombeaud