Far from the Madding Crowd

Far from the Madding Crowd (2015) is Thomas Vinterberg's period romance, and you can watch it online on iFILM. Drawn from Thomas Hardy's novel, it follows a young woman weighing three very different men.

In Victorian Dorset, Bathsheba Everdene inherits a farm and chooses to run it herself, an unusual move for a woman of her time. Three suitors orbit her. Gabriel Oak, a quiet shepherd, once proposed and was turned down. Her neighbour William Boldwood, wealthy and lonely, would hand her everything he owns. And Sergeant Frank Troy, handsome and hollow, turns her head with the least effort of all. Every choice she makes carries a price she doesn't spot until too late.

Vinterberg, one of the founders of the Dogme 95 movement, shoots Hardy with surprising daylight and air: green hills, sheep, rain, and a sheep-shearing barn instead of stiff drawing-room manners. Carey Mulligan anchors the whole thing on her character's stubbornness and doubt, with Matthias Schoenaerts, Michael Sheen and Tom Sturridge beside her. It marks the fourth time cinema has reached for this Hardy text. Stream Far from the Madding Crowd (2015) online on iFILM.