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Very best movie i ever watch

The Age of Commercialism

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

This is what happens when you try to turn a richly detailed 400 page book into a 100 minute made-for-TV Hallmark Hall of Fame movie. Needless to say, much is lost. The script ignores Hardy's lush narrative and substitutes expedient blather. Characters aren't developed so they come across as shallow and one-dimensional. Wildeve's passion for Eustacia is portrayed (to cite one example) as simple lust. In the book, his feelings are more complex."As for Wildeve, his feelings are easy to guess. Obstacles were a ripening sun to his love, and he was at this moment in a delirium of exquisite misery. To clasp as his for five minutes what was another man's through all the rest of the year was a kind of thing he of all men could appreciate."Because of time constraints, events are compressed, condensed and in some cases simply deleted. The subject of Thomasin's and Clym's inheritance (and an associated lengthy and amusing gambling sequence) is completely ignored. Worse yet, Mrs. Yeobright's attempted reconciliation with her daughter-in-law, her long, torturous and dramatic journey to her son's house and back, and the subsequent repercussions, are given absurdly brief and unconscionably unfaithful treatments. Thus, the arguably most important episode in the novel, the one that precipitates all of the ensuing tragedy, is glossed over in the movie. The (strangely well-lit) climactic storm sequence was also botched.As for the acting, I thought that Catherine Zeta-Jones as Eustacia Wye and Clive Owen as Damon Wildeve were actually pretty good given what they had to work with. Of course I might not have been so charitable with CZJ if she looked more like, say, Roseanne Barr. Steven Mackintosh succeeds in capturing the quiet dignity of the Diggory Venn character. Everyone else was pretty much forgettable except for Ray Stevenson who was awful as Clym Yeobright.Another positive – good scenery, reasonably faithful to Hardy's (extensive) description of Egdon Heath.

This film is an almost complete waste of time. I am studying the book for my English A level, and the film only contributes in one way, and that's getting across that the whole scenario is set in a rural idyll. The acting is wooden, the filmography is laughable, and the so called dramatic scenes in the film had the majority of my class (including me) snickering into their texts. The book, although not my favourite literary choice, is miles better than the film is, and the sound track is just plain irritating. Don't watch this film unless you are looking for a timeless, quality storyline transformed into mindless, media waste.

I picked this up on whim from my local library. Being a fan of English settings and of period romance, I considered it a good candidate for some afternoon diversion. Unfortunately, it was one of those movies where you simultaneously want it to end, but feel impelled to watch it to finish (perhaps imagining that it will take a turn for the better, which this movie never does). So, yes, I was disappointed, but not as disappointed as I was when checking here and discovering that everyone who's reviewed this adaptation of a novel I admittedly have never read (and most likely never will, now) found it so wonderful!I see lots of comments about Zeta-Jones, but fail to understand what's so noteworthy in her performance here. I found it flat and lacking in dimension (I guess those are the same things). Eustacia is selfish, fickle and flighty and because of that, primarily just distant and distracted. I appreciate that this is her nature, but instead of finding her intriguing or even mysterious, I found myself annoyed and disinterested. This lack of depth mad her, in my mind, clearly unworthy of either of her two love interests, even considering that one becomes an adulterer. I found nothing tragic in her character, no subtlety that would beg for understanding. In fact, she wasn't even very good at being the evil temptress/witch.Worst of all, her character never really develops, serving instead simply to provide the antagonist to the plot. Sure, Catherine's a doll, but that alone isn't enough to sustain interest in her role here. She has developed into a marvelous actress since this movie was made(as more recent performances attest to), so I have to assume that her relative inexperience as an actress at this point, combined with poor production values in the making of the movie, cast her in this bad light.Overall, the story tries so hard to moralize, but employs some pretty lame appeals for sympathy. In particular, Clym's loss of sight seemed silly; I didn't feel at all for this guy with all of his obsessive book-reading (and doesn't one of the characters even warn him that he'll "go blind from all your reading"). He can't even put the damn book down when he's in bed with his beautiful new bride. Furthermore, Ray Stevenson's acting adds nothing to the role, which I found only to be yet again another flat performance.Now I admit Clive Owen's Damon had some fire to him and his easily stands out as the best performance, but it couldn't save the film. I won't go on and on, but I will remark that this BBC production is not on par with others they've taken on, such as the absolutely glorious 1995 BBC/A&E version of Pride and Prejudice, but then not having read Hardy, I have no way of knowing if he was as clever an artist as Jane Austen was. I have to admit there are horrible adaptations of her work out there, as well, so for now, I'll give Hardy the benefit of the doubt (how nice of me, you're thinking) and write this off to an uninspired telling of his tale.

This romance drama was marvelous. Considering it was on tv I thought it was wonderfully done. Catherine Zeta-Jones plays the gorgeous Eustacia Vye, who is in search of romance. She plays the part very well and looks gorgeous as usual. Highly recommend.Superb!!!