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90Michael Winterbottom's handsome, uncompromising film. Jude glows with Eccleston's and Winslet's performances and with those in supporting roles.
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90A careful, finally powerful film.
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88Yet the film, no more than the novel, shouldn't be described as depressing. Both of them shine with heightened vision and poetics. [01 Nov 1996]
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88Jude is a modernized version of Hardy, but a handsome, fluid and red-blooded one that has no difficulty finding correlatives to the prejudice and hatred of wit and spirit against which Hardy, in his gimlet-eyed way, so passionately attacked. [25 Oct 1996]
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88This is a film of tremendous scope and emotional depth that uncovers the soul of a novel and brings it to life on the screen.
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80A brave, powerful, far from comfortable and distinctly English affair that bears all the hallmarks of a labour of love rather than an example of intellectual folly.
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75Together [Christopher Eccleston, Rachel Griffiths and Kate Winslet] stake a difficult story and make it into a haunting film.
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75Jude is knockout Hardy, filled with stormy visual poetry and accompanied by a gorgeous yet simple score.
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75[Jude] is bristling, muscular Victorian noir. Of the scant handful of previous Hardy adaptations, none can match its intensity.
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75It's worth seeing this stark adaptation of Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure just for the extraordinary performance of Christopher Eccleston as Jude Fawley, the stonemason in turn-of-the-century England whose dreams of university scholarship are thwarted. And British telly director Michael Winterbottom sustains a fine atmosphere of dank misery.
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75the film is well cast and the script is mostly faithful to the novel. Visually, it's probably the most accurate evocation of Hardy's world ever put on film. [01 Nov 1996]
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70Technically, pic is top-drawer, with restless, fluid cutting by Trevor Waite that adds to the unstarchy look, and a copious musical score by Adrian Johnston that gives a separate "sound" to the many locations (a folksy drone for Marygreen, High Baroque music for academic Christminster, and so on).
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67Director Winterbottom and screenwriter Hossein Amini could have given the story a bit more resonance, particularly in character development, if they had allowed some of the scenes to go a little longer.
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60With Christopher Eccleston as Jude and Kate Winslet of ''Sense and Sensibility'' as his great love, Sue Bridehead, and with convincing evocations of 19th-century England from locations in Edinburgh and the north of England, Jude remains a handsome if gravely flawed film.
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50The problem here isn't grimness but a failure to make grimness wrench the heart. [18 Oct 1996]
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50Winterbottom's efficient yet prosaic approach is evident from the first grimy frame. [18 Oct 1996]
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Director Michael Winterbottom languidly unspools the story; nothing seems to lead to anything.
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25The basic plot of Thomas Hardy's great novel "Jude the Obscure" comes through accurately enough, but its sublime irony and sardonic wit apparently got lost in the misty English countryside.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 1 out of 3
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Mixed: 0 out of 3
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Negative: 2 out of 3
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RaveendraB.0
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josec0Not true to the novel, epsecially the proto-feminist lunacy of Winslets character. Ridiculous screenplay, poorly directed and woodenly acted.
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TrevorP.10Incredible experience. Great acting, great cinematography, greta score.