Period dramas are ten a penny these days, as someone from a period drama might say, so you need a writer or director with an interesting voice to put a witty spin on the exhausted genre. Even so, finding the right balance between innovation and emotion is a challenge: Joe Wright got too wrapped up in his aesthetic innovations to make Anna Karenina work, while Andrea Arnold’s stark Wuthering Heights stumbled due to some dodgy performances from its adult cast.
Where others have failed, one-time Danish filmmaking prodigy Thomas Vinterberg may succeed. He’s lining up a take on Thomas Hardy’s Far From The Madding Crowd, and though he’s never matched the astonishing intensity of his breakout hit, Festen (aka The Celebration), his romantic sensibility is attached to an experimental streak – he co-founded the Dogme 95 movement, along with Melancholia‘s Lars von Trier and Søren Kragh-Jacobsen (Mifune’s Last Song) – which could yield fascinating results.
[via Collider]
