Jude (1996)

Review by All Movie Guide
Although it was considered so shocking at the time of its publication that author Thomas Hardy never wrote another novel, the subject matter of Jude the Obscure probably won't outrage or titillate modern audiences. It may, however, depress the hell out of them, which may explain this adaptation's relative obscurity and lack of awards. Lit-flick fans flocked to the film, soaking up its sumptuous Victorian detail and the flat-out beauty of Eduardo Serra's cinematography; the mainstream audience, however, missed out on a complex picture that transcends corsets and accents to delve into the heart of what it means to stand outside of society. The difficulty of capturing the essence of Hardy's novel is that it's more than a mere story of forbidden love. Jude (grave, granite-faced Christopher Eccleston) carries two torches, one for his cousin, Sue (Kate Winslet, vivacious and prickly), the other for the life of a scholar; both are denied to him through no fault of his own. It's easier to encapsulate Hardy's intertwining issues of class, social propriety, and unfulfilled longing in the story of two cousins who fall in love, but first-time screenwriter Hossein Amini and jack-of-all-trades director Michael Winterbottom refuse to give short shrift to their protagonist's scholarly passions. There's a great scene here where Jude stands atop a table in a pub full of monied students, singing out the Apostle's Creed in flawless Latin, and spitting out a condemnation of his country's class-based educational system -- perfect visual shorthand, and hardly the film's only example. The sense of inexorable doom that overtakes the picture as it progresses hardly prepares the viewer for the harrowing final act; to the filmmakers' credit, though, they follow this sucker punch with a steady rumination on what it all means before they roll the credits. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide