MOVIE REVIEW: 'Far From the Madding Crowd' - Monitor
“What a luxury, to have a choice,” says one woman to her more fortunate female employer, as they debate not only which suitor for the latter to choose, but whether to get married at all. “Far from the Madding Crowd,” Thomas Vinterberg’s ethereal adaptation of the 1874 Thomas Hardy novel, involves a Victorian-era heroine struggling to balance her independent nature and situation with the societal constraints of the period. What separates this film from stuffier or more dated adaptations is how modern its themes are for women and the careful protection of identity. Hardy’s novel should be a staple of every high school senior about to make his or her way into a world in which personal success will demand a constant balance of seemingly limitless possibilities with very real obstacles and obligations. Vinterberg’s film should be a companion piece to Ang Lee’s lovely 1995 rendition of “Sense and Sensibility,” as both films are as much about choice as balance, their female protagonists keenly aware of their social and financial situations and the... He proposes to her after bringing her a pet lamb, listing the attributes of his small farm to entice the pretty but penniless orphan with only a sharp mind and plucky nature as her dowry. She declines, not because there are other suitors at present, but because she simply doesn’t want to be married, to be property of someone else. Source: www.themonitor.com
