Jude (1996)
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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Very well executed
Save your money for something good and enjoyable
The movie runs out of plot and jokes well before the end of a two-hour running time, long for a light comedy.
Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.
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.
"Jude" is an extraordinary film by one of the most daring and amazing director out there ,as Michael Winterbottom. The original novel("Jude the Obscure") is translated in a brilliant script by Hossein Amini and centers on the aspirations of a lower-class man,Jude Fawley(Christopher Ecclestone),who fights to become a university man. After a quick and wrong marriage with an humble country girl,Arabella(Rachel Griffiths), he met his cousin Sue Bridehead(Kate Winslet)an intelligent,beautiful and apparently as unconventional and brave as him. Their passionate love will end tragically though. The film is from the end to the beginning sad and depressing at his best since we see Jude and Sue fight against the Victorian society's beliefs such as a legalized marriage(they only live as a couple)and the impossible aspirations of a lower-class man who would like to become equal to his peers and study at the university. Ultimately their lives will be destroyed by a cruel destiny. Jude is completely coherent to his ideas but Sue is a tormented and fragile woman who,in the end, is not able to came to terms with what she professed at the beginning. In the end, she turns to religion and accepts a life she rejected because she feels guilty. Christoph Ecclestone and Kate Winslet are just superb. Ecclestone is a serious underrated actor who should be in the spotlight. He never misses a beat and gives an amazing performance. Kate Winslet is completely committed to her role and gives a dramatic performance that is devastating. The director gives the a vivid and crude cut and confirms his uncommon abilities to tell a story set in a different era as we're seeing a modern tragedy.His direction is as tormented as his leads and we can't help but have a feeling that he is not afraid to show the crudest side and the terrible contradictions of the Victorian period. my vote is 10/10.
Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure is a very complicated and ambitious book, and while heavy-reading it is a fine piece of literature. This 1996 film adaptation is a rock-solid adaptation, that is ambitious and realistic. I will admit some parts like the killing of the pig is anything but tender, but none of the scenes are over-sensationalised.As an adaptation of the book, it works very well. If I had a quibble, the secondary characters could have been developed more than they were depicted. The screenplay is well crafted; the writers and the director have at least some idea how Hardy's work should work on film and stay relatively true to the book. The music both haunting and beautiful at the same time was absolutely outstanding.The direction is very fine, never sluggish and never overdone. It was about right. The cinematography is superb, dark, fluid and sensitive. And the period detail was just as good. It was this element alone that contributed to the mood of the adaptation. The love story here which is dirty and tragic was beautifully realised, and very rarely struck a false note.The performances were just brilliant, no overplaying or underplaying as far as I could see. Special mention must go to the two lead performances. Christopher Ecceleston is a very talented and I think under-appreciated actor, and in the title role he was perfectly cast and showed real versatility. As Sue Brideshead, the beautiful Kate Winslet is positively luminous and is true to her character. Out of the supporting performances, the best is Rachel Griffiths as Arabella, a very modest performance I must say.Overall, has its minor flaws but a very well done adaptation of a complicated book. Always realistic and never overly-sentimental as I feared. Though the ending is heart-rending. 9/10 Bethany Cox
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.