In late 19th-century England, Jude aspires to be an academic, but is hobbled by his blue-collar background. Instead, he works as a stonemason and is trapped in an unloving marriage to a farmer's daughter named Arabella. But when his wife leaves him, Jude sees an opportunity to improve himself. He moves to the city and begins an affair with his married cousin, Sue, courting tragedy every step of the way.
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Jude Fawley (Christopher Eccleston) comes from a lower class rural village. He aspires to be educated but is a simple stonemason. He marries country girl Arabella (Rachel Griffiths) thinking she's pregnant. Jude is wrong for the country life and Arabella departs for Australia claiming that she thought she was pregnant and did not trick him. Jude goes off to Christminster where he hopes to go to the university. He is taken by cousin Sue Bridehead (Kate Winslet). The university rejects him and Sue refuses him after he reveals that he's married. She marries the religious Phillotson (Liam Cunningham) but it's a loveless marriage. She and Jude go off together in a life of struggle. Arabella sends him Juey who she claims is his. Jude and Sue have two more children together but their common-law relationship causes problems and ends in tragedy.Director Michael Winterbottom brings some life to this difficult story. He could have made this darker and moodier. He could have played up the star-crossed lovers. He could also put the social structure much more out front. He is blessed with two great actors. Eccleston and Winslet are terrific. This is a fine romantic epic.
Winterbottom keeps the temperature of the searing original novel in his faithful, brilliantly realised film adaptation. Hardy was sick when writing Jude, out of sorts, and the bleak tale has in some quarters been credited more to bile than his muse. Jude's fate is certainly more damning than other Hardy heroes such as Tess, and the final third of this tale requires a strong heart to get through.Jude Fawley is a self-educated stonemason looking to enter the hallowed halls of (a thinly-disguised) Oxford. Class and snobbery combine to crush that dream, but he fights and wins his other dream, to secure the love of his cousin Sue. Headstrong and independent, a prototype Suffragette, she will face her own stern test and be found wanting.Christopher Eccleston inhabits the character fully. The scene in the pub where he recites the Lord's Creed in Latin, then challenges the undergrads to judge if he got it right, is painful and poignant. Winslet is stunning as the admirable but infuriating Sue Brideshead whose choices in life are oblique but all-too-real. A cold draft of air oozes from her expression every time she shuns Jude. There isn't a missed beat in Winslet's portrayal of a woman who goes from supremely confident to utterly lost.Winterbottom would go on to tinker and experiment, unsuccessfully, with Hardy's Mayor of Casterbridge in The Claim. Here, he keeps it strictly BBC, evoking the early industrial age magnificently in his cobbled streets and fog-shrouded spires. An array of British acting talent fill out the supporting roles superbly, most notably Liam Cunningham as the put-upon Phillotson, and Rachel Griffiths as pig-hugging Arabella, whose rising fortune sways in counter-point to Jude's slow, inexorable decline. In one scene where she encounters her estranged son at a fairground, the interaction between woman and child is both naturalistic and magical. The expression on the face of Little Jude's sister is priceless. Perhaps a happy accident, perhaps genius from the director, but all the more tragic for what follows.One of the most ill-fated couples in British literature are vividly brought to life in this film, designed to satisfy fans of the novel. Hardy, one feels, would approve.
The gentleman from the UK who commented on the film and said that he hadn't read the book is very intuitive regarding the book's motive force - and quite correct!Thomas Hardy (my favorite author) wrote many of his novels as searing polemic against the institutions of Victorian English society. Hardy was a modern thinker, and felt that the societal strictures that predestined people to riches or servitude were abhorrent in the extreme.It seems evident that the film was suggestive enough of this agenda, so on that score the film is successful.
did anyone notice as I did the use of Edinburgh for the town of, I think Christchurch, or some made up place where Jude goes to pursue university? Being home that I miss often i instantly recognised most of the scenes there as being filmed on the Royal Mile in the old town and directly around the square in front of St Giles. Also all the churchyard scenes, including their children's graves was in Greyfriars Churchyard nearby. i found it interseting why theyd give it a false name, furthered by the fact that in the scene in which Jude follows Sue into a public meeting in a hall the man speaking almost seems to be discussing the divide between "the new town" and "the old" which anyone who's visited Edinburgh will be well aware almost splits the town in two, the rich and the poor. the new town being visible in the film in scenes such as following the children's death and Sue's departure Jude follows her to an anonymous house before she returns to the church, I think its just below Queen Street. Where was that supposed to be by the way? Just happened to catch the film while flicking last night and thought it was ace, harrowing, but rewarding nonehteless.
