The Woodlanders

I haven't the slightest idea what a spoiler is and I doubt whether many folks who are not film buffs will know either, so I'll just have to hope that my comments don't enter that category and request that you use a non-jargon word in order that us ordinary punters can understand.

I cannot agree with comments made concerning the scenes dragging or the film itself lacking cinematic scope. Some critics have taken this view but I believe this is rather an indication of how susceptible critics can be to saying what they think people will expect them to say (whilst conveying the distinct impression that they are the most bravely objective critics in the world).

No, this is a film which refuses to go at the pace expected of it but, rather, courageously moves at the precise pace demanded of it by the overall direction and approach. I am glad I haven't read the book because it might have tempted me to try to make a like-for-like comparison and thereby go on to make erroneous deductions.

The two mediums, film and literature, demand different approaches and, to me anyway, this thoughtfully filmed tale is at ease with itself and that is all we can ask of it. It is not trying to be Gone With The Wind or even Pride and Pejudice, nor should it make the attempt.

Like Bleak House, it will completely glide past the attention span of the viewer who is anxious for untimely progression or who is not mentally prepared for its purposely ponderous and understated theme. What I would suggest, most humbly, is that anyone with doubts set aside a whole evening with nothing else planned and no interruptions possible. Then forget anything you have previously experienced concerning this tale and view it afresh. Put away any cynical prejudgement and consciously assume that the film's understated acting is fully intended as such. Then I believe your experience and enjoyment of this film will improve no end.

The director was no doubt under immense pressure to make this tale more paced and juicy. I, for one, fully commend him for resisting this and producing a magnificently restrained U film, a truly English shared countryside, domestic and subtly romantic experience - at least for anyone allowing it the space to embrace them. VNP.

Thomas Hardy wrote such classics as Tess of the D'Urbervilles and The Mayor of Casterbridge, yet he always maintained that his best work was the often overlooked The Woodlanders. This film version is first-rate. I saw it a week after I saw the mega-budget Titanic, and I actually found this film more moving and more engaging that the costly James Cameron epic.

The story is faithful to the book, but omits some of the peripheral details. It's about a young woman who returns to a close knit woodland community after several years away. In that time, she has become an educated lady, and she finds it quite difficult to relate to the people she once grew up with, having experienced wider and more varied cultures. Her childhood sweetheart is a simple woodcutter, and she feels that she is now too "good" for him, so she forsakes her fondness for him and marries a wealthy and educated doctor, with tragic consequences.

The film was filmed in the New Forest (a gorgeous area of England) and it is a visual treat from first frame to last. The scenery is simply ravishing. Furthermore, the performances are very thoughtful and persuasive, complementing the sharp and carefully worked out script. This is definitely one of the best adaptations of a Thomas Hardy novel, and it can stand alongside Polanski's Tess and Schlesinger's Far From the Madding Crowd with its head held high.

I found this very involving and affecting in a way that I've not found other Hardy adaptations or the books themselves. As a film it has an unusual combination of modesty of style - no great acting showiness - and of the characters themselves, allied to an inspired and faultless control of light and mood.

It has an immense integrity - the recreations of the woodlander's homes and workplaces, as mentioned earlier the superb faultless control of the quality of light (longish scenes shot just after dawn, at dusk etc etc), the authentic period behaviour and manners, the unforced pace mirroring the mood. It is full of traditional understated virtues both the story itself and in the way it wears its technical virtuosity.

If Titanic (mentioned by an earlier reviewer) was a great clanking iron CGI mechanical monster, heavy handed in all departments, this is all living and breathing humanity on a human scale - an increasingly rare treat.

There's something beautifully quaint about this film, based on a Thomas Hardy novel. It was made in 1997 but there's none of the sexing-up you'd expect in a modern film.

The Woodlanders are the inhabitants of a small village. Country folk Grace Melbury (Emily Woof) and Giles Winterborne (Rufus Sewell) were childhood sweethearts but when Grace comes back from boarding school, she finds herself unable to mix with Giles and the other villagers. Her father (Tony Haygarth) encourages her to marry new doctor Eldred Fitzpiers (Cal Macaninch) who is more befitting of her new educated self. However Fitzpiers cannot cope with mixing with the woodlanders, and Grace's heart pangs for Giles once more.

There are two things Thomas Hardy is famous for: gloomy fate and Wessex, a fictional version of South West England. The third thing that he should be famous for is romance. The film is achingly romantic as everybody pines for the person that they cannot have. There's a secondary character who is also in love with Giles- odd reclusive Marty South (Jodhi May), who shares Giles' passion for nature. I would like to have seen more of her character but maybe that would just add to the aching tragedy of it all.

Apart from the tragic finale, the gloomiest moment has to be when Giles' house gets demolished and Mrs Charmond (Polly Walker), a wealthy patient with her eye on Fitzpiers, complains that his house is blocking the road- cue a shot of a rotting pile of wood.

In a sense, the film is a bit like Marty South: odd, obscure, slow and innocent. The slow pace works in a sense as you soak up all the beautiful cinematography and the gorgeously tragic score. Characters never have massive rages of passion- in that sense, it's a little bit like Chekhov. Life, miserable as it is, goes on.

All of the characters are sympathetic, even Dr Fitzpiers. Macaninch's performance is enigmatic: on one hand, Fitzpiers is a cruel and adulterous snob; on the other, he's a man of science who just doesn't understand the old-fashioned ways of the country people. Grace's father does her the most harm, forcing her to better herself because of his own feelings of inferiority, and yet Haygarth gives a warm and touching performance.

As the leads, Woof is adorably childlike as Grace and Sewell makes for a nice simple countryman. The film- I don't know the novel- is all about simplicity and innocence. The world of sexual desire is not present here, making the intrusion of Mrs Charmond all the more unpleasant. Her garish red dress is completely out of place in the charming pastel attire of the villagers and one longs for her and Fitzpiers to leave so we can hang forever in that wonderful idyll.

My criticism would be that they could have fitted more in. The film seems to touch on the novel rather than portray it, and maybe a more conventional dramatic pace might have helped there. Maybe more probing of the social issues would have been good- really, just more of everything.

This is definitely a Sunday afternoon film- a slow languid weepy, just like the good old days, that you can watch with anyone of any age. But to be honest, it's the perfect film to watch on your own as you allow it to wash over you.

I have really discovered Thomas Hardy through wonderful movies like Tess (Tess of the d'Urbervilles) (1979), Far from the Madding Crowd (1967 & 2015) and the 1978 TV mini-series of The Mayor of Casterbridge as well as the 1971 TV mini-series , Jude the Obscure (1971).

This is also a wonderful discovery for those of us who have come to love movie versions of Thomas Hardy novels (or stories). It tells the story of a young woman who has been sent off to finishing school by her father so that she can rise above the level she has grown up in: the lower- class timber workers of the deep woods in 19th-century rural England.

Though she and a local woodlander had had an agreement to marry when they came of age, her father wants something better for her and encourages her to marry a local doctor who lives and practices in the village. She agrees to marry the doctor, but soon learns that he cannot stand the crude rustic manners of the local people.

This sets up a series of conflicts between her and her father as well as the way she feels about the life she had been raised in and the life that her father wants for her. I love the way the story unfolds as well as the dark (and often wet) sylvan atmosphere that it so capably captures and inhabits.