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81 comments in total

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44 out of 46 people found the following comment useful :-
A naturalistic tragedy of immense proportions, 21 January 2003

Author: Haydeck (pjevelinca@hotmail.com) from Slovenia

I started watching this movie after having read the viewers' comments, so I was prepared for the depression inducing effect everyone kept talking about. Seems like you are never prepared enough for this movie. Sadness and tragedy are in the air right from beginning, you can feel them all the time, even when things start getting better for the two protagonists you know it can't last...because they are doomed, losers, not meant to be happy together. And yet the love they share is the purest and most devoting love I have ever seen on screen; it stunned me how true Jude was to Sue, and how brave Sue was, accepting Jude jr. as one of her own, no questions asked. Many people might find the scene of Sue giving birth and being watched by Jude jr. disturbing, yet it is essential to understand his later deeds, at least partly. The climax of the tragedy is so emotional and so immensely cruel it rips your heart out. I felt the theatre was falling into pieces and so were we, watching this emotional tornado, weeping like possessed. The experience of this movie will make you ponder life, love and death, it will make you understand how important it is to teach your children well and never make them feel undesired. It will make you realize how important it is to always think twice before commiting yourself, even in the modern world flooded with divorces. It will show you what it means to really love, completely and uncompromisingly. I highly recommend this masterpiece, a tale of two beautiful, unfortunate heros ahead their time, doomed by cruelest fate imaginable. 10/10

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29 out of 31 people found the following comment useful :-
Love and Life are Tragic, 24 March 2003

Author: veelatte

Life and love can be tragic and beautiful. The ways of society and the heart are not simple and can be quiet opposed.

Jude is a masterpiece as a novel and film. Yes, it is quiet the most painful story, but all lives worth living have pain and heartbreak, love and laughter. This is no sugar-coated romance, but a dark, dirty, tragedy. What affects me so is the timelessness of this story. Michael Winterbottom truly made a wonderful film - he did not write the story folks.

Christopher Eccleston is a master actor, he brings such a full-blown sense of the man "Jude". He really knew this character strongly and I feel that he has a level of intelligence and feeling that is rarely used in modern male actors.

Kate Winslet is a stunning actress. Hard to believe that she carried the level of passion and maturity in "Jude" as Sue Bridehead at the ripe age of 20. She is truly one-of-a-kind and deserves all accolades placed upon her shoulders.

I had no problem with the love scenes and nudity in this movie - although that could be because Chris Eccleston is so incredibly attractive. Isn't love-making crucial and appropriate for two people in love? I don't understand how some people commented poorly on that. It seems quite acceptable for me.

Don't look for mushy weepy romance in Jude. You will find power, grief, passion, love, and bravery. Jude and Sue possess more bravery than most people living today, the tragedy is that they risked everything for their love - which destroyed them and the lives of their children.

Masterpiece film making and acting. Bravo!

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25 out of 30 people found the following comment useful :-
not what i thought..., 28 September 2004

Author: aroseisarose from suberbia

...but i loved it. i was at the library getting a movie for girls night and then i saw the jacket for this movie. first thing i notice it has kate winslet, its historical, and the tag line is really catchy so i check it out, drive to my friends house and start the show. instead of a cute feel good romance i'm confronted with a heavy movie of death, love, hate, and betrayal.

now i found this movie to be amazing. the story was very much true to hardy's novel (well up until the end) and while the film is dark it is wonderfully so. it is not a lighthearted period romance but rather a study on human behavior and how it can go terribly wrong when the heart becomes involved. it is obvious that they love each other, and the fact they are cousins is secondary... they had never known each other as children as most children know their cousins. they met as adults and fell in love as such. their story is an impassioned one of trail and error romances, exploring ones desires and drives, the burden of nonconformity, and what can cause as love to break down.

very good, very powerful, but a very abrupt ending with one of the best closing lines. ****/*****

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18 out of 18 people found the following comment useful :-
A tragic story told beautifully, 8 April 2003
Author: agvii from United States

You can't discuss this movie without discussing the novel of the same name. The movie stays remarkably true to the novel; from character to location. If anything, the movie enhances the novel--through Christopher Eccleston's fantastic performance we see in Jude the light of desire and the crush of defeat.

Though another review characterizes Thomas Hardy's depiction of females as misogynistic, I disagree. The character of Arabella is certainly a villain at her heart, but the character of Sue Bridehead is a mirror of our tragic hero, Jude. Through their interactions, we see not only a stunning performance by Kate Winslet, but also a relationship of equals in misery. Certainly, the males in the novel and movie are depicted at least as wretchedly as the females.

This movie draws the viewer in and gives you insight into Jude's world, from it's optimistic beginning to its tragic end. Definitely not a date movie, but absolutely fine film-making.

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19 out of 23 people found the following comment useful :-
Don't let the kids see this, 16 December 2001
Author: Dennis Littrell (dalittrell@yahoo.com) from SoCal

This pessimistic and rather brutal cinematic production is based on the nineteenth century novel Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy. A bowdlerized and altered version of that novel first appeared in Harper's New Monthly Magazine as a serial beginning in December 1894. Its original title was `The Simpletons,' a title modern viewers of this movie might find appropriate considering how Jude and Sue round out their lives.

It need hardly be said that any motion picture, and certainly not one running only about two hours, can hope to do justice to Hardy's novel (his last, incidentally) which is about 180,000 words long (about 400 pages of dense text). An earlier TV mini series version made by the BBC that I have not seen, Jude the Obscure (1971), ran for almost four and a half hours in six episodes. But this is a pretty good movie anyway, highlighted by an enthralling performance by Kate Winslet.

The movie starts rather slowly, if picturesquely, until Kate appears and then the movie comes to life. I have seen Winslet in several films, including her first feature film when she was18-years-old, Heavenly Creatures (1994), an interesting film made in New Zealand based on a sensational matricide from the 1950s. She was very good in that film, her budding talent immediately obvious as the spinning, laughing, crazy teen who went off the deep end emotionally. In Jude, Winslet's sharp, confident and commanding style is given greater range and she comes across with a performance that is full of life, effervescent, delightful, witty, sly, clever, and very expressive, and she looks beautiful doing it.

The story itself, a naturalistic tragedy that in some respects anticipates Theodore Dreiser, et al., was considered immoral in its time. `The Bishop of Wakefield, disgusted with the novel's <insolence and indecency>, threw it in the fire,' according to Terry Eagleton who wrote the Introduction for the New Wessex Edition of the book. Modern film goers will hardly notice the implied critique of marriage that offended Victorian readers, but they might find the scene where Arabella throws the pig's `part' at Jude indelicate. Victorian readers found that scene most offensive. As a public service I want to warn any modern viewer who might be offended at seeing Kate Winslet naked to avoid this film. (Just Joking: Kate is quite fetching in the Rubenesque shot.) To be honest, though, this really is a tragedy that still has the power to offend some sensibilities. Certainly you don't want the kids to see it.

Christopher Eccleston plays Jude and does a good job, and Rachel Griffiths in a modest part plays Jude's first wife Arabella. Director Michael Winterbottom stayed spiritually true to Hardy's dark vision while tailoring the tale for modern audiences. There's a nice period piece feel and some charming cinematography. The denouement is well set up and so realistically done that we don't know whether to be horrified or outraged. I think I was both.

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18 out of 22 people found the following comment useful :-
Our friends in the west, 18 April 2004

Author: paul2001sw-1 (paul2001sw@yahoo.co.uk) from Saffron Walden, UK

There are three common errors made by directors of historical films that Michael Winterbottom neatly avoids in 'Jude', his adaptation of Thomas Hardy's novel. Firstly, he creates a picture of a livable past, not some shallow collage of country houses and Dickensian squalor but a world in which a normality, of sorts, might reign. Secondly, he sets out to explore that normality, instead of simply judging the past by present values. Finally, he is working with a script that is neither archaic and stiff nor laced with modern anachronisms. Add to this strong direction and casting (Christopher Ecclestone is excellent in the title role, and a young Kate Winslett fetchingly appealing as Sue), and the result is a good film; but it lacks something of a dramatic punch.

I haven't read the book, but one senses from the film that it may represent a fierce attack on then-contemporary values, particularly those involving marriage, values which drive the characters to their ultimate misfortune. One senses this, but in the movie this theme is played down, so the story seems merely to tell of the ups and downs of Jude's life, presented as fairly accidental happenings. A terrible tragedy eventually occurs; and, because of what has happened in the past, a second, avoidable, tragedy then follows. The problem, dramatically speaking, is that the second tragedy appears smaller than the first, thus the end of the film serves as an anti-climax. Without a unifying sense of accusation, we, instead of a powerful polemic, are left with only the tale of an unfortunate.

'Jude' is one of the better, and the least sentimental, of historical films. But something of the point has been lost in translation.

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14 out of 16 people found the following comment useful :-
An imperfect adaptation but powerful film in its own right, 11 April 2004
Author: Kevin Morgan (oecumenix@hotmail.com) from Cambridge, England

This is not a film for Hardy purists, nor is it for the faint-hearted. No two-hour adaptation could do complete justice to Hardy's final work, and many of the themes of religion, education and society are pared down in favour of the tragic central relationship between the eponymous Jude and his cousin Sue.

Eccleston and the then up-and-coming Winslet are superb as the on-off couple, lifting the film despite some patchy directing. The passage of time and emotion is dealt with heavy-handedly (albeit faithfully) by Winterbottom, but this is in contrast to some beautiful and touching set-pieces. This is where the film excels, especially in the bold decision to cut the final stage of their relationship in favour of a powerfully bleak ending in which the audience, along with Jude, is left with little closure.

No happy endings here, then, and those of fragile stock should be warned that, despite being visually underplayed, the pivotal scene is played with a brutal tragedy which makes it no less shocking.

Finally, I feel the score should be given special mention: this was Adrian Johnston's first major work but it succeeds as an evocation of tenderness, piety and sorrow, especially in the final two scenes of the film.

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11 out of 14 people found the following comment useful :-
greatness, 12 March 2001

Author: bgilch from Montreal, Quebec

The best film of the 1990's.

Dazzling and heartbreaking in every way imaginable.

Eccleston and Winslet give career performances, Hossein Amini's screenplay is judicious and honest, and Winterbottom's direction and cinematography capture everything there is in Hardy's greatest novel.

Unmissible, unparallelled, and devastatingly beautiful.

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12 out of 16 people found the following comment useful :-
Beautifully depressing, 18 August 2003

Author: George Parker from Orange County, CA USA

Set in late 1800's Britain, "Jude" traces the life of the title character (Eccleston), a learned but humble stonemason, who courageously struggles with life's disappointments only to be struck with unspeakable tragedy. A beautifully depressing human drama, "Jude" traverses the highs and lows of life through its dreary tale of one man's steadfast conviction to his beliefs and to the woman he loves. Not for everyone, "Jude" is a film for realists into serious drama which many will likely regard as a "downer". (B+)

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8 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
Thomas Hardy's Jude, 1 July 2001

Author: dbdumonteil

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

How could such a sprawling novel like Hardy's become a two-hour movie? It was a mammoth task and the result is only partly successful.That's why the beginning of the movie seems botched.Actually everything happens when Kate Winslet's character appears.The main flaw lies in the fact that Jude's main ideal was to become an intellectual,Christminster remained his horizon till the very end.In the movie,the second part of the movie focuses on the Sue-Jude relationship.After the doyen's letter,his cultural ambitions take a back seat and it's Sue who provides the main interest:a woman ahead of her time,despising marriage, this leading to her downfall.Then again,the film recreates the fatality (recalling sometimes French writer Zola )hanging on Jude and Sue only occasionally (Drusilla warning the hero).Arabella's character,though vital in the novel,is sometimes reduced to a walk on,the same goes for Aunt Drusilla. Assets: a very good music score,fine performances with K.Winslet the stand-out,beautiful photo and nice film sets.

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