Customer Reviews

The Mayor of Casterbridge

5 star:		(39)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

When I saw Alan Bates act Michael Henchard, I thought that I would never see acting any better than his, but I guess it was the role that I was identifying with, for Ciaran Hinds is the perfect Michael Henchard. He was wonderful as Bois de Guilbert in IVANHOE. He was indeed the rugged Captain Wentworth in PERSUASION and many have claimed him to be the very best Rochester in JANE EYRE. I think that Mr. Hinds performance in this movie goes a long way to make it the best movie that I have ever seen.

Michael Henchard was a rugged selfmade man striving to follow his own star though that star is always the star of fate.
All that holds him back is the all encompassing past which wills him to destruction. He cannot escape himself or his fate.
To me he was Hardy's greatest creation. He is everyone.

Nearly every role that Ciaran Hinds has played has these same
dimensions and he handles each of them to near perfection which makes him my favorite actor and possibly the best actor of our time.

How can anyone love a character that would sell his wife and daughter even in a drunken state? Thomas Hardy and Ciaran Hinds
make us love this horrible man even as we love ourselves, and we
pray for his redemption. I think that Hardy himself wavered between redeeming Henchard or not.

It was not just Thomas Hardy and Ciaran Hinds that made this
incomparable movie. This is Mr. David Thacker's movie, and for a director with such a short list of credits, it is all the more astounding! He did it mainly with excellent casting. Jodhi May was great as Elizabeth Jane. Juliet Aubrey fantastic as the mother,James Purefoy wonderful as Donald Farfrae,and Polly Walker is the perfect Lucinda. He did it by pacing the movie a little faster than Hardy's literary gait. He made this movie happen by an unrelenting revelation of the time and of the nature of the land. Frame by frame, utterance by utterance, gesture by gesture,this movie marks excellence. There are many excellent people that made this happen that are not at the top of the credits, but we see their names over and over in great productions. We salute these great contributors, too, and selfishly wish them many more great successes.

"I don't see why men who've got wives they don't want, shouldn't get rid of them...I'd sell mine this minute if anybody'd buy her."

When Michael Henchard (Ciaran Hinds) offers to sell his wife and baby girl, Elizabeth Jane, to a passing sailor for 5 guineas at the Weydon fair one evening, the viewing audience gasps at the horrendous audacity of any man who would treat his wife and child in such a fashion! Susan Henchard (Juliet Aubrey) is so humiliated and embarrassed by her drunken husband's behavior (combined with his history of bad temper), that she agrees to the sale, becoming from then on the wife of the sailor Newson. She takes off her wedding band and sets it in front of Henchard with a sad, lost look in her eyes while Henchard greedily grabs the 5 guineas off the table and stuffs them in his pocket. When he awakens the next morning to find them gone and realizes what he has done, he swears an oath to God he will not touch alcohol for the space of 21 years, but when his "wife & daughter" come to find him 19 years later, will they find him changed...?

A&E did an excellent job on this Thomas Hardy adaptation; it is accurate to the original story (although I did feel some moments and scenes were cut too short to allow the full effect to seep in), but I still feel it is well done on the whole. The acting is superb with Ciaran Hinds dominating in his role as the tyrannical Michael Henchard; also excellent is Jodhi May as the sweet Elizabeth Jane (Mirah in Daniel Deronda), Polly Walker as Lucetta (Jane Fairfax in Gwenyth's Emma), and James Purefoy as the Scotsman Donald Farfrae. Although her part is shorter, I also thought Juliet Aubrey as Susan Henchard did a fantastic job. An excellent film, well worth the time invested!

This is a lavish 2003 production by A&E which stays true to the characterization and flow of the story in Hardy's novel. The 5 major characters in this drama will hold your attention throughout as you watch how their lives intertwine and the tragedies unfold.

The story centers on Michael Henchard, Mayor of Casterbridge. Henchard has a dark and shameful secret which occurs nearly 20 years before when he is then just a poor hay trusser. One day, when drunk, he sells his wife (Susan) and baby daughter (Elizabeth-Jane) to a stranger. When he regains sobriety, he tries to locate his family but they have gone abroad with the stranger. Regretting his action, Henchard vows to refrain from alcohol. He turns over a new leaf, settles in a new town (Casterbrige) and later becomes a wealthy tradesman and Mayor. Then one day, Susan returns to him with the now grown Elizabeth-Jane ("EJ", played by Jodie May), who may or may not be Henchard's real daughter. They reconcile and he "remarries" Susan, both agreeing to keep their past relationship a secret. There is relative domestic bliss in Henchard's life until the appearance of 2 other characters.

The first is Donald Farfrae, a young and handsome Scotsman (played by James Purefoy) whom Henchard persuades to assist him in his wheat and corn business. When Farfrae becomes more popular than Henchard and proves to be cleverer in managing the business, Henchard becomes jealous, fires him and begins to treat him as an enemy. The problem is that at that time, Farfrae is already subtly courting EJ. The second character to rock the boat is a beautiful woman, Lucetta (played by Polly Walker) who is Henchard's secret lover before the return of Susan.

The acting by all the actors is phenomenal. Ciaran Hinds is perfect in the title role. James Purefoy, with his dreamy eyes and sensuous lips is a heavensent as the handsome, gentle and well-meaning Farfrae. But the best performance is by Jodie May who plays the sweet, uncomplaining (and quietly suffering) EJ most sensitively. She is my favourite character in the story.

Many scenes will stay in the viewer's mind. To me, these are the 3 most unforgetable scenes:

1) EJ and Farfrae meeting in a barn while it is raining heavily outside. After they have talked a little, Farfrae tells EJ that she has dust(husks?) all over her dress. EJ tries to wipe them off, but Farfrae (in that delicious Scottish accent of his) tells her that "blowing is best" (so as not to ruin the dress). He then gets real close to her to blow the dust away. So gently he does it, blowing around EJ and close to her neck. It is a most romantic scene. Throughout you see that EJ is shy about it but there is an unmistakably delighted expression on her face.

2) When Henchard chooses to reveal a terrible secret to EJ, causing her heart to break. As she cries bitterly, you realize all the more what a wonderful actress Jodie May is. Her tears are genuine, large drops that literally rain down from her eyes.

3) The scene involving Lucetta in her red dress, and two human effigies. I cannot forget how Lucetta collapses to the floor in hearsickness when she catches sight of the effigies from her window, and her anguished cries of "Oh, I shall die. I shall die." I find this scene most sad and harrowing.

To sum it up, this is a most superior and sumptuous period drama and I highly recommend it. The storyline is meaningful and the performances absolutely unforgetable.

Starts sad and spirals down. I must admit that I had not read the novel by Thomas Hardy before I watched this adaptation. Later, when I tried to read the novel I could not finish it and will probably never view the movie again. I am not a fan of Greek tragedies and I truly believe that is what Thomas Hardy was trying to write. Everyone you come to care about in this film, and apparently the novel, goes through terrible pain.

It starts with Michael Henchard (Ciaran Hinds) selling his wife and baby girl. Such `sales' did occur at the time as a method of divorce and, as shown, the wife had to agree to it. She also usually knew who would buy her. When the next morning Henchard swears off alcohol I thought good, a tale of redemption. Henchard becomes the mayor of Casterbridge and, when his wife and daughter return, I am convinced it will all turn out right. Silly me.

This is a well-written story with several characters we come to care about, plenty of plot twists, emotion and ample pain and torment. So, you have been warned, do not expect a Jane Austen romance--this is a tragedy from start to finish.

Kyle Pratt

Drunkenly auctioning off your wife and baby is reason enough to despise someone, but the "Mayor of Casterbridge" gives us plenty of other reasons to despise and pity him. The A&E adaptation of Thomas Hardy's novel is an all-around solid one -- solid scripting, solid directing, solid acting from Ciarán Hinds and Jodhi May.

At a county fair, Michael Henchard (Hinds) gets drunk, and auctions his wife and baby daughter off to a kindly sailor. So he swears off booze for the next twenty-one years, and works hard to become a pillar of the community.

Nineteen years later, the sailor is lost at sea, and the wife Susan (Juliet Aubrey) and grown daughter Elizabeth Jane (Jodhi May) return to Casterbridge, and find that Michael has become the mayor and corporate head of the town. He's also incredibly sorry for what he did, and asks Susan to remarry him quietly so his crime never needs to be known. She does.

But Michael soon feels threatened by his brilliant new manager Donald Farfrae (James Purefoy), who is also falling in love with Elizabeth Jane. Michael's corporate power begins to slip, and when Susan dies he discovers a shocking fact about his daughter -- sending him into a spiral of lies, jealousy and misery.

Basically, it's all about watching someone's life go down the drain. There have been more complete adaptations of the Thomas Hardy novel, but this one is just fast-moving and tense enough to give it a feeling of urgency.

The big lesson: Henchard's life isn't wrecked because of alcohol, or even because he auctionied off his wife -- he ruins his own life with his lies, viciousness, and the ugly flaws that makes him try to control the people around him. It has some cute scenes between Purefoy and May in a rainy barn, but other than that it's a relentlessly dark movie.

The whole thing is set in a picturesque English village in a pretty green countryside. David Thacker doesn't neglect the nastier, grimier side of life, but he peppers the story with beautiful visuals (Elizabeth in the graveyard) and moments of merriment or friendship. Then they get ruined by confrontations with Henchard.

Hinds and May give the best performances here -- Hinds gives us a solid performance, as a man who tries to do the wrong thing, but is led astray by his temper. He can flip from miserable repentence to cold cruelty in a moment. And May gives a wonderfully sensitive performance as a confused young girl whose romance and job are derailed by her "father's" resentment.

"The Mayor of Casterbridge" is an all-around solid miniseries, with two really outstanding performances by May and Hinds. Melancholy and bittersweet.

If you haven't seen this version of Mayor of Casterbridge on DVD, you haven't seen this movie. A&E aired it, and chopped out over an hours worth, often cutting into scenes, conversations, chopping music, completely deleting scenes. The DVD shows so much more. More of the relationships between all the characters, more in the beginning, more of the courtship between Farfrae and Elizabeth Jane, more of the second marriage of Henchard and Susan, more of the arc of Henchard's character-going from bad, to good, to failure. More scenes, music, costumes, fabulous acting from an elite cast, some beautiful panoramic vistas. Remember Farfrae singing in the tavern? Now you can hear the whole song, people commenting and clapping afterwards, and see Elizabeth Jane working more in the tavern. That is just a taste of what was chopped out on TV. DVD also includes a short bio on Thomas Hardy & a bibliography of all his works. Sharp picture and fantastic sound. Treat yourself to the full movie, not the Nip-tucked one shown on TV, that you may have video-taped! Enjoy!

Cirian Hinds as Michael Henchard, Jodhi May as Elizabeth Jane appear in a film adaptation of one of Thomas Hardy's most famous novels of unrelenting human darkness. The Mayor of Casterbridge, limited to a TV production, belonged on the big screen as it is a big story.

Hinds is at his best, portraying the constant hard driven man of late 19th century southeastern England. May is his opposite, soft and gentle, accepting and demure. But it is Elizabeth Jane's resolute belief in goodness that brings out the best in Henchard and in this movie. On four different occasions one sees not only real tears but a complete breakdown to the suffering May has somehow absorbed and manifested to her portrayal of a simple but infinitely likeable character. Hardy often portrays his women as heroines; this is a very powerful example.

Solid supporting cast of James Purefoy as professional protagonist Donald Farfrae and Polly Walker as Lucetta Templeman, the pretty newcomer with a much hidden agenda. Wonderful period costumes, setting, and additional cast as the citizens of Casterbridge, believable in their accents and dialogue. Shot in Dorset County, England, this film looks and feels authentic.

The only thing missing for me is another twenty minutes of plot and the big screen it deserves. Play it for the fun of period drama but enjoy it forever for the powerful presentation of humanity as portrayed by a magnificent Hinds and the amazing Miss May.

While many adaptations suffer from over-emphasizing the costumes and scenes at the expense of great acting, or from taking too much license in editing or adapting a story, this film combines wonderful cinema with a good period feel. The acting is fine, the landscapes are beautiful, and the scenes seem "natural".

Moreover, this is a great story, full of emotion, difficulties, and cultural relevance. Set (and written) in England during the latter half of the nineteenth century, many of the emerging topics of the day (changes in technology or social roles, for example) are brought into the story.

While a shorter adaptation than the 1978 mini-series, this film is definitely worth viewing if you are a fan of Thomas Hardy and/or nineteenth century (particularly British) literature.

I too cannot top how the previous reviews described this movie. What caught my attention while I was channel flipping was the superb acting!! I loved the story. Can't wait to buy it as I never saw the beginning. Whish there were more out there like this one. It should be on the big screen!

I've seen this movie 3 times on A&E, and I loved it. The Mayor of Casterbidge is about a man named Michael Henchard, who sold his wife and baby daughter to a sailor at a county fair after he had had too much to drink. He regets this the next morning, and swears not to "drink anything stronger than tea" for the next 21 years. 19 years later his wife and her daughter come searching for him, and find him the mayor and respected citizen of a town called Casterbridge. The rest of the story is filled with complications, secrets and everything in between. This is the story of the rise and fall of Michael Henchard. All of the main charactures are wonderfully played by Ciaran Hinds, Jodhi May, James Purefoy, Juliet Aubry and Polly Walker, the supporting cast is great as well. The script stays close to the book, the story is beautiful and bitter sweet, and the sceenery is breathtaking. All in all this is a great movie, and I highly recomend it!