Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Jude Fawley is a young man working as a stonemason in a rural village in Victorian England. Jude is highly intelligent, and dreams of a university education, even though he is from a working-class background at a time when very few working-class people went to university. Jude's ambitions appear to have come to an end when he makes an imprudent marriage to Arabella, a sensual, earthy farmer's daughter who does not share his intellectual aspirations. After only a few months, however, Arabella abruptly abandons him and emigrates to Australia.Now feeling free to pursue his original ambition, Jude moves to the university city of Christminster, but his application to study at the university is rejected, largely on the basis of his lowly social origins. He falls in love again when he meets his cousin, Sue Bridehead, who shares his intelligence and, like him, sees herself as a free spirit with no time for social convention. . At this period in her life, however, Sue is not so contemptuous of social convention as to live openly as man and wife with another woman's husband, and because Jude is still legally married to Arabella she decides to marry Jude's former school teacher, Richard Phillotson. Later she changes her mind and abandons Richard to live in an adulterous relationship with Jude.The film is, of course, based on Thomas Hardy's novel "Jude the Obscure". It keeps reasonably closely to Hardy's plot, although with one or two alterations, and also keeps his invented place-names. Hardy intended these names to disguise real places- his "Christminster", for example, is supposed to be Oxford- but the film was not always shot in these locations. Much of it was filmed in the North, especially in and around Durham, although there are exceptions. We see a shot, for example, of the Dorset town of Shaftesbury, which does indeed appear in the novel under the name of "Shaston".The last film I saw from director Michael Winterbottom was "The Claim", another Hardy adaptation, in that case of "The Mayor of Casterbridge", but one which transferred the action from Dorset to the American West. I hated "The Claim", partly because of its unnecessary change of setting, but also for other reasons, so I was pleasantly surprised by "Jude". It has its faults, but they are mostly those of its literary source, which is far from being my favourite Hardy novel. (I enjoyed "The Mayor of Casterbridge" a lot more). Neither Hardy nor Winterbottom can make me believe in the "Father Time" episode, which struck me as a piece of unnecessary sensationalism when I read it. ("Father Time", in the novel, is the nickname of Jude's son by Arabella, who turns up towards the end of the story; the nickname is not actually used in the film, where the boy is referred to as "Juey").Also Winterbottom, perhaps even less than Hardy, never really makes me understand just what Richard has done to merit his shabby treatment at the hands of his wife and his former pupil. In the novel he can come across as a rather dull pedant, but here, as played by the good-looking Liam Cunningham, he comes across as decent and likable. He is, admittedly, rather older than Sue, but in an age when older man/younger woman marriages were commonplace this in itself would not have been an obstacle to a happy marriage. (Cunningham, in fact, was only 35 when the film was made, only three years older than Christopher Eccleston, who plays Jude).These points apart, however, "Jude" is overall a reasonably good film. Eccleston, who regards this as his best film, gives an excellent performance as Jude, a proud, passionate and free-spirited man who pays a heavy price for his defiance of social convention. (Apart from the failure of his university ambitions, Jude finds it difficult to get work when potential employers discover that he and Sue are "living in sin"). It has a dark, gritty look, quite different to the normal bright colours and lavish costumes of most British "heritage cinema", but this is appropriate to the humble social backgrounds of its main characters and to its sombre theme, the downfall of a young man who had much to offer society but found himself rejected by it. 7/10

This was a depressing and disturbing movie. I Couldn't get this movie out of my head for a couple days and in a bad way! I wished I would of turned it off before I was so traumatized by it! It's long, cold , depressing and a waste of 2+ hours. The only reason I hung on was for the actors. Kate and Christopher made the best of a terrible story. The director did a great job of putting you right there in the movie. Unfortunately it's not a great place to be. Some of the scenes were just a little overly disturbing for my taste. This movie could of ended an hour earlier and it wouldn't of mattered. I strongly suggest skipping this unless you really want to fell deflated afterward.

The gentleman from the UK who commented on the film and said that he hadn't read the book is very intuitive regarding the book's motive force - and quite correct!Thomas Hardy (my favorite author) wrote many of his novels as searing polemic against the institutions of Victorian English society. Hardy was a modern thinker, and felt that the societal strictures that predestined people to riches or servitude were abhorrent in the extreme.It seems evident that the film was suggestive enough of this agenda, so on that score the film is successful.

Jude Fawley(Christopher Eccleston) lives in a small agricultural town. He is a stonemason who aspires to a higher education level and to go to the university. He marries his childhood sweetheart, but it soon appears that it was wrong from the beginning. She had tricked him into the marriage thinking she was pregnant. They split, he goes to a nearby city and she goes elsewhere. In the new city, he meets his cousin Sue(Kate Winslet), with whom he becomes enthralled with. They both know the relationship is impossible, so they arrange a marriage to a professor(Liam Cunningham) at the university Jude hopes to go to. Within 6 months, the marriage is over and Sue asks for a divorce so she can be with Jude. Her husband says, no. Sue leaves him anyway and she and Jude begin to live together. Their life is the life of abject poverty. At one point they have to auction off their possessions to pay the bills. When people find out they aren't married and have 3 children, he loses his job and they must move on. In the end due to a terrible tragedy, Jude and Sue are separated permanently, though they are still in love and still married to each other's hearts.This is a brutal, realistic film. Thomas Hardy wrote it in the 19th century, but the topic is relevant today. I think just about everyone knows someone or a family that is homeless, had to go bankrupt, had cars repossessed, had to hawk their possession, had to take on 2 or more jobs. I think I've made my point. Having children would have made all of the above worse.All the actors were brilliant, but I must pick two out especially. Christopher Eccleston plays Jude simply as though he knew him. That, in his mind, Jude may have lived down the street from him. The second is also called Jude played by Ross Colvin Turnball. He played Jude's son of the woman he married. She had gotten pregnant after they were married. Jude never knew he had a son with her. This young actor has tremendous presence. Turnball also played his character simply. He could have been the boy he pretended to be.BEWARE: Because it is very realistic, it has an "R" rating with nudity, sexual situations and an adult subject matter. I wouldn't recommend this film for anyone below the age of 17.