'madding Crowd' Lacks Needed Passion

The ultimate failure of "Far From the Madding Crowd," the latest screen adaptation of the Thomas Hardy novel, resides mainly in an area almost too delicate to mention. [...] the experience of watching "Far From the Madding Crowd" is that of seeing men tumbling into lustfulness, love or sputtering incoherence right at the precise moment we're expecting them to say, "You're really terrific, and I hope we can be good friends." In a sense, the attempt (and to some degree the achievement) of the film is to persuade us to see the action entirely through Bathsheba's eyes, so that we experience the men as an external problem. The English countryside, the bucolic setting, the sheep and horses and cows, the green fields and dirt roads, and the rituals of farm life all attract the eye and ground the film in authentic and winning detail. Mulligan and the film are at their best when Bathsheba is presented as a businesswoman, getting into the grit and muck of farmwork, wading into the water to bathe the sheep or nerving herself up to fire a corrupt employee.