Far from The Madding Crowd

A great deal of effort and talent has been expended to make an agreeable and rather forgettable trifle.

An adaptation of Thomas Hardy's famous novel, this old fashioned romantic drama holds our attention so finely that we forget how familiar and predictable it is.

It is a correct adaptation of Hardy's work, although we could have enjoyed ourselves much more by seeing the same story told in a less conventional way. [Full Review in Spanish]

Sadly, the story is so blandly dumb, the characters so hollow, the message so convoluted and self-contradictory, that Far From the Madding Crowd offers little beyond surface-level pleasures.

Conventionality is almost surpassed by fine performances and some technical flair, yet the emphatically romance-driven conclusion is all the more disappointing alongside such winning translation of Hardy's rural verisimilitude.