Jude Critic Reviews

Technically, 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).Read the full review

Jude adapted by Hossein Amini, often looks good, and (thanks primarily to Winslet) flickers with humor. But it’s never consistently there for us.Read the full review

This is a film of tremendous scope and emotional depth that uncovers the soul of a novel and brings it to life on the screen.Read the full review

Jude 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]Read the full review

Michael Winterbottom's handsome, uncompromising film. Jude glows with Eccleston's and Winslet's performances and with those in supporting roles.Read the full review

With 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.Read the full review

It'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.Read the full review

Director Michael Winterbottom languidly unspools the story; nothing seems to lead to anything.Read the full review

The problem here isn't grimness but a failure to make grimness wrench the heart. [18 Oct 1996]Read the full review