Film

Far from the Madding Crowd

Name: Far from the Madding Crowd
Genre: Drama, Romance
Released: 2015
Cast: Carey Mulligan, Matthias Schoenaerts, Michael Sheen, Tom Sturridge, Juno Temple

Other titles called Far from the Madding Crowd: the 1967 film.

Thomas Vinterberg's handsome, unhurried adaptation of Hardy's novel puts Carey Mulligan's fiercely independent Bathsheba at the centre of a love triangle with three utterly different men — steady, reckless, and desperate. It's lush, slow-burning costume drama with real teeth: about ownership, autonomy, and what it costs a woman to choose for herself in a world that assumes she can't.

TMDb rating

3.5

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love period romances where the emotional stakes come from stubborn pride and bad timing rather than swooning, and you enjoy watching a strong-willed heroine refuse to be tidied into someone else's plan.

Skip it if you want a brisk plot with clear momentum, since this one lingers on rural seasons, long silences and the slow business of farm work between its romantic turns.

What it asks of you: Settle in for just under two hours of unhurried scenes, where the big moments arrive quietly and much of the feeling sits in glances, weather and the pauses between lines.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Pride & Prejudice2005

Same director, Joe Wright, working the same trick of turning a classic novel into something visually alive and urgently romantic rather than stuffy. Keira Knightley's Lizzie shares Bathsheba's stubborn streak.

But Lighter and more comic in tone; if you wanted the tragedy and moral weight of Hardy, this is gentler stuff.

Anna Karenina2012

Also Joe Wright, also Victorian-adjacent, but here the theatrical staging turns the love triangle into something stylised and feverish. A woman destroyed by desire and social expectation.

But The stage-set artifice is divisive — some find it thrilling, others find it distancingly gimmicky.

Jane Eyre2011

Cary Fukunaga's version is moody, atmospheric, and gives its heroine real steel. Another story of a woman weighing independence against the pull of a difficult man.

But Gothic and interior where Madding Crowd is pastoral and expansive; less sunlight, more shadow.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Far from the Madding Crowd

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Poldark2015

Same DNA — rural landholding, a fierce heroine, competing suitors — but swapped from restrained literary cinema into unashamedly soapy long-form television.

Same rural English world of farms, class anxiety, and men circling a strong-willed woman, but stretched over hours of television and turned up to soap-opera intensity — all brooding stares and thunderous scores.

But Deliberately pulpier and more melodramatic; it wants your heart racing, not your mind working.

Wuthering Heights2011

Andrea Arnold strips the moors of romance and leaves something raw and elemental — same wild English landscape, same doomed intensity, filmed with a handheld, unpolished eye.

But Bleak and deliberately alienating; there's little of the warmth or hope Madding Crowd offers.

Tess1979

Polanski adapting Hardy directly, with Nastassja Kinski as another countrywoman punished by men and circumstance. Gorgeous, mournful, unhurried filmmaking from the same literary well.

But Considerably grimmer and slower; this one offers no triumph, only tragedy, and it takes its time getting there.

Cold Mountain2003

A woman holding a farm together while waiting on the men in her life, set against a landscape as much a character as the cast. Sweeping, romantic, unafraid of hardship.

But War-torn America rather than rural England, and leans harder into epic scale than intimate character study.

The Age of Innocence1993

Scorsese's take on desire crushed by social convention, with the same sense that every glance and gesture in a period drawing room carries enormous weight.

But Drawing-room New York, not farmland England — the class stakes are different, and it's colder, more controlled.

Sense and Sensibility1995

Ang Lee's take on Austen shares the same interest in women choosing between suitors who represent very different futures, with Emma Thompson's script full of wit and feeling.

But Considerably softer and funnier — Austen's comedy of manners rather than Hardy's fatalism.

Testament of Youth2015

Another intelligent, headstrong Englishwoman refusing to be defined by the men around her, this time against the backdrop of the First World War. Handsome, sincere, unshowy filmmaking.

But Grief and wartime loss dominate rather than romantic choice; a heavier, sadder watch overall.

The Homesman2014

Takes the same question — can an independent woman on land she owns survive men's assumptions about her — and answers it in the American West instead of Wessex.

Hilary Swank plays a hard, capable, unmarried farmer navigating a frontier where men constantly try to decide her worth and fate for her. Bleak, strange, unforgettable Western.

But Far harsher and stranger than Hardy's pastoral England; this is grim frontier survival, not romance.

Gone to Earth1950

A direct ancestor in mood and setting — earlier era, same rural love triangle and the same fascination with a heroine caught between land, instinct, and the men who covet both.

A Powell and Pressburger melodrama about a wild countrywoman torn between a gentle husband and a predatory squire, shot with the same lush, painterly love of English landscape.

But Older, stagier acting style and a more heightened, fable-like tone than the naturalism of the 2015 film.