(2003) This lengthy, literary film (200 minutes), adapted from Thomas Hardy's novel via a largely faithful screenplay by Ted Whitehead, directed by David Thacker, takes place in mid-19th-century England as a young couple with an infant girl arrive at a county employment-waiting fair.

Having got drunk, Michael Henchard (Ciaran Hinds), an itinerant farmer, spouts off that a man should be allowed to auction off a wife just as horses are before offering up his young spouse, Susan (Juliet Aubrey), to anyone willing to pay five guineas for her and the child. After a sailor, Newson (Clive Russell), pays Henchard, Susan says: "Will be better for me and Elizabeth Jane both." On the morrow Henchard regrets and repents, vowing not to touch liquor for 21 years.

Nineteen years later, Susan, a sailor's widow, and her daughter (Jodhi May), having returned from Canada, revisit the site of the wife sale and learn from an old woman that Henchard resides in Casterbridge. In the town the two women discover that Henchard is the mayor and the principal gentleman, having achieved prosperity as a corn-factor and hay merchant. Elizabeth obeys her mother by introducing herself to Mayor Henchard as "a distant relation by marriage" and handing him a letter in which Susan has written that she makes "no claim on him."

Sending a message in return (enclosing the money he'd taken for her), he pays for their lodging at the Three Mariners Inn before setting them up in a cottage with an offer to make amends: he proposes to court and marry her, asking she keep his disgrace a secret. She agrees but declines to answer his query: "Do you forgive me?"

Meanwhile, Henchard makes acquaintance with Donald Farfrae (James Purefoy), a Scotsman passing through on his way to see the world and America, who impresses the mayor with his method of reconstituting wheat and accepts an offer to become manager of Henchard's grain operations: "It's providence." Trusting Donald like a brother and seeking advice, Henchard relates the secret of his relationship with Susan but also a more recent intimacy, induced by a fit of gloom with another lonely soul, a woman in Jersey. Donald reinforces Henchard's sense of duty to Susan while counseling that he cannot see the second woman ever again, though he owes her monetary compensation and a letter of explanation, which Farfrae accepts responsibility to compose.

Following Michael's remarriage to Susan, someone induces Donald and Elizabeth Jane to meet in the granary, sending each a letter purportedly written by the other. Conflict develops between Henchard and his manager after Farfrae overrules his boss's tyrannical behavior toward an employee. Further tensions cause a rift, resulting in Henchard's releasing Farfrae who goes into business for himself, with his astute business sense of "knowing when to buy and when to sell." Having noticed Farfrae's strong interest in Elizabeth Jane, Henchard once again acts the bully by demanding that the girl promise never to see Donald again: "He's an enemy to our household."

Having caught a cold in the rain, Susan reveals to her daughter her involvement in attempting to spark an interest with Donald; before she dies, Susan composes a letter containing another secret not to be opened until Elizabeth Jane's wedding day. However, when Henchard finds and reads the letter, his mood alters toward Elizabeth Jane; he rescinds his earlier ban on her seeing Donald.

When news of Henchard's wife's death reaches Lucette (Polly Walker), she comes to Casterbridge and offers Elizabeth Jane a means of independence from her father by becoming her companion at Highplace Hall. Having inherited a small fortune, Lucette's purpose in taking in Henchard's daughter is to provide him - whom she regards as having a bad temper and fierce ambition but a decent man - with an excuse to visit her.

Before Henchard reaches Highplace Hall, Donald comes calling on Elizabeth Jane, but instead makes an impression on Lucette as does she with her wealth, talent, and beauty on him: "What's happened to us is most curious," says Farfrae. Lucette tells Elizabeth Jane her own history and present dilemma but as if it had happened to someone else. Envious of his former manager's enormous successes in trade and love - "deep beyond an honest man's understanding" - Henchard gambles on bad weather to upend his rival's standing. Further, he threatens to make public Lucette's previous intimacy with him by means of her letters of passion if she refuses to marry him, though Lucette dislikes his loving her only out of charity and Elizabeth Jane says, "Don't compel her."

More surprises are yet to surface in this compelling drama in which Henchard says to Elizabeth Jane, once she knows of all his sins: "Though I loved you lately, I loved you well."

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Copyright © 2008 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
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