Carey Mulligan plays Bathsheba Everdene as a flint: hard, sharp, but able to spark or flake when struck from the right angle. If there's one thing Far From The Madding Crowd gets right, it's this aspect of her character, even as it struggles, like so many Thomas Hardy adaptations before it, to find a purpose for itself beyond "widescreen study guide." Picturesque and impersonal, it evacuates incident upon incident, as though Hardy's plotting were the runs.
Ignatiy Vishnevetsky
April 30, 2015