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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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.
If I had just started ranting about how much I hated this movie, it would not portray the true beauty that is so easily over-looked. Yes, this movie made me want to kill myself, but I do not say that in a "this is the worst movie ever" kind of way. This movie was intended to be a depressing example of how love is tested and how life is full of tragedy.This movie was definitely not one that I have watched if I would have known how it would make me feel, I am more of a happy-movie kind of person. But after watching it, I started to realize that there were many beautiful lessons to be learned from it.So all-in-all, 'Jude' is a mixed bag of: pain, love, tragedy, beauty, depression, and then more pain and depression.
A briskly but sensitively shot, well-acted and brutally rendered version of Thomas Hardy's tragic novel. I remember being terribly disappointed though (when I saw this in the cinema) that the grainy, visceral b&w images of the title sequence were discontinued as the movie proper got started.Ecclestone finds a great deal of sympathy and charm with which to play the ambitious but unlucky Jude. Kate Winslet is an arguably bigger draw though, throwing herself headlong into a part that requires... well many of the characteristics that she brought to the successful Austen adaptation Sense and Sensibility the previous year: willfulness, joy and despair. Rachel Griffiths is horrible as Jude's ball and chain but nothing is as nasty as the notorious fate of the incestuous couple's children. Strong stuff from Winterbottom, as usual. 6/10
This film tells the story of a boy who from his childhood dreamed of becoming more. He hopes to leave the brutal rural world of pig-slaughtering and rolls in the hay for the intellectual world of the university, which to him represents the freedom to think one's own thoughts and to live one's own life.Sadly, his conduct and, more importantly, his opportunities cannot bear his aspirations. When faced with a "pregnant" girlfriend, he marries her, as any "good" man should. When faced with mockery from wealthy undergraduates (a scene all the more odd because it pits two Doctor Who's against each other), Jude tries to prove his intelligence by reciting Latin in a pub, realizing in the end that no matter how much Latin he studies he will always be a laborer to these people. He becomes infatuated by his free-thinking cousin, Sue Bridehead, who is similarly pursuing education and independence and who also rejects Victorian conventionalities about women belonging in the home.Sadly, the two cousins find that they cannot reject the values of their world without dire consequences, for them and for their children.Happily, this film beautifully depicts Sue and Jude's struggles in gorgeous shots of the landscape and rich images of the two leads. Christopher Eccleston gives Jude a warm humanity and Kate Winslet creates a Sue Bridehead whom we easily believe could both rebel against social custom and also be crushed by it. I particularly liked the depiction of the harshness of Victorian life: the working in the rain, the beatings, the cruelty to animals, the pain of childbirth, the lack of privacy endured by poor families. The film is not Masterpiece Theatre (no criticism just a comment on style) and shows us clearly what the university means to Jude and just what he is trying to escape.If you liked "The Remains of the Day," "The Age of Innocence," "Tess" or "The Idiot" (book, I've never seen a film of this), you will appreciate this film and the book, as well.