Jude Fawley is a young man working as a stonemason in a rural village in Victorian England. Jude is highly intelligent, and dreams of a university education, even though he is from a working-class background at a time when very few working-class people went to university. Jude's ambitions appear to have come to an end when he makes an imprudent marriage to Arabella, a sensual, earthy farmer's daughter who does not share his intellectual aspirations. After only a few months, however, Arabella abruptly abandons him and emigrates to Australia.
Now feeling free to pursue his original ambition, Jude moves to the university city of Christminster, but his application to study at the university is rejected, largely on the basis of his lowly social origins. He falls in love again when he meets his cousin, Sue Bridehead, who shares his intelligence and, like him, sees herself as a free spirit with no time for social convention. . At this period in her life, however, Sue is not so contemptuous of social convention as to live openly as man and wife with another woman's husband, and because Jude is still legally married to Arabella she decides to marry Jude's former school teacher, Richard Phillotson. Later she changes her mind and abandons Richard to live in an adulterous relationship with Jude.
The film is, of course, based on Thomas Hardy's novel "Jude the Obscure". It keeps reasonably closely to Hardy's plot, although with one or two alterations, and also keeps his invented place-names. Hardy intended these names to disguise real places- his "Christminster", for example, is supposed to be Oxford- but the film was not always shot in these locations. Much of it was filmed in the North, especially in and around Durham, although there are exceptions. We see a shot, for example, of the Dorset town of Shaftesbury, which does indeed appear in the novel under the name of "Shaston".
The last film I saw from director Michael Winterbottom was "The Claim", another Hardy adaptation, in that case of "The Mayor of Casterbridge", but one which transferred the action from Dorset to the American West. I hated "The Claim", partly because of its unnecessary change of setting, but also for other reasons, so I was pleasantly surprised by "Jude". It has its faults, but they are mostly those of its literary source, which is far from being my favourite Hardy novel. (I enjoyed "The Mayor of Casterbridge" a lot more). Neither Hardy nor Winterbottom can make me believe in the "Father Time" episode, which struck me as a piece of unnecessary sensationalism when I read it. ("Father Time", in the novel, is the nickname of Jude's son by Arabella, who turns up towards the end of the story; the nickname is not actually used in the film, where the boy is referred to as "Juey").
Also Winterbottom, perhaps even less than Hardy, never really makes me understand just what Richard has done to merit his shabby treatment at the hands of his wife and his former pupil. In the novel he can come across as a rather dull pedant, but here, as played by the good-looking Liam Cunningham, he comes across as decent and likable. He is, admittedly, rather older than Sue, but in an age when older man/younger woman marriages were commonplace this in itself would not have been an obstacle to a happy marriage. (Cunningham, in fact, was only 35 when the film was made, only three years older than Christopher Eccleston, who plays Jude).
These points apart, however, "Jude" is overall a reasonably good film. Eccleston, who regards this as his best film, gives an excellent performance as Jude, a proud, passionate and free-spirited man who pays a heavy price for his defiance of social convention. (Apart from the failure of his university ambitions, Jude finds it difficult to get work when potential employers discover that he and Sue are "living in sin"). It has a dark, gritty look, quite different to the normal bright colours and lavish costumes of most British "heritage cinema", but this is appropriate to the humble social backgrounds of its main characters and to its sombre theme, the downfall of a young man who had much to offer society but found himself rejected by it. 7/10
Now feeling free to pursue his original ambition, Jude moves to the university city of Christminster, but his application to study at the university is rejected, largely on the basis of his lowly social origins. He falls in love again when he meets his cousin, Sue Bridehead, who shares his intelligence and, like him, sees herself as a free spirit with no time for social convention. . At this period in her life, however, Sue is not so contemptuous of social convention as to live openly as man and wife with another woman's husband, and because Jude is still legally married to Arabella she decides to marry Jude's former school teacher, Richard Phillotson. Later she changes her mind and abandons Richard to live in an adulterous relationship with Jude.
The film is, of course, based on Thomas Hardy's novel "Jude the Obscure". It keeps reasonably closely to Hardy's plot, although with one or two alterations, and also keeps his invented place-names. Hardy intended these names to disguise real places- his "Christminster", for example, is supposed to be Oxford- but the film was not always shot in these locations. Much of it was filmed in the North, especially in and around Durham, although there are exceptions. We see a shot, for example, of the Dorset town of Shaftesbury, which does indeed appear in the novel under the name of "Shaston".
The last film I saw from director Michael Winterbottom was "The Claim", another Hardy adaptation, in that case of "The Mayor of Casterbridge", but one which transferred the action from Dorset to the American West. I hated "The Claim", partly because of its unnecessary change of setting, but also for other reasons, so I was pleasantly surprised by "Jude". It has its faults, but they are mostly those of its literary source, which is far from being my favourite Hardy novel. (I enjoyed "The Mayor of Casterbridge" a lot more). Neither Hardy nor Winterbottom can make me believe in the "Father Time" episode, which struck me as a piece of unnecessary sensationalism when I read it. ("Father Time", in the novel, is the nickname of Jude's son by Arabella, who turns up towards the end of the story; the nickname is not actually used in the film, where the boy is referred to as "Juey").
Also Winterbottom, perhaps even less than Hardy, never really makes me understand just what Richard has done to merit his shabby treatment at the hands of his wife and his former pupil. In the novel he can come across as a rather dull pedant, but here, as played by the good-looking Liam Cunningham, he comes across as decent and likable. He is, admittedly, rather older than Sue, but in an age when older man/younger woman marriages were commonplace this in itself would not have been an obstacle to a happy marriage. (Cunningham, in fact, was only 35 when the film was made, only three years older than Christopher Eccleston, who plays Jude).
These points apart, however, "Jude" is overall a reasonably good film. Eccleston, who regards this as his best film, gives an excellent performance as Jude, a proud, passionate and free-spirited man who pays a heavy price for his defiance of social convention. (Apart from the failure of his university ambitions, Jude finds it difficult to get work when potential employers discover that he and Sue are "living in sin"). It has a dark, gritty look, quite different to the normal bright colours and lavish costumes of most British "heritage cinema", but this is appropriate to the humble social backgrounds of its main characters and to its sombre theme, the downfall of a young man who had much to offer society but found himself rejected by it. 7/10