Winterbottom creates his film, Jude, as an indictment of society for its treatment of the outsiders who reject socially approved sexual relationships. In making his film through the lenses of social criticism, he borrows and transforms the original text, Jude the Obscure, written by Thomas Hardy. Winterbottom borrows only one side of Hardy’s two-layered narrative methods: the visualization of Sue. In Hardy’s novel, author/narrator reveals Sue’s reality through conveying her inner thought while he portrays Sue from the perspective of Jude. The visualization of Sue, limiting access to her consciousness, results in a discordance in Winterbottom’s Jude. It is produced in Sue’s characterization when she refuses to have a sexual relationship with Jude after she left Phillotson to live with Jude and she takes the road of self-abnegation after children’s death. Her change seems drastic and abrupt. A dissonance is also created in the film’s intention to criticize society which ostracizes non-conformists who refuse to enter into a legal contract of marriage. The film undermines its own argument as the appeal of Sue, a rebel against social convention, is lost by transforming Arabella into a good maternal figure. Despite the discordance, Winterbottom’s Jude achieves the followings: a dramatic effect through juxtaposed scenes and sudden reversal, the visual/aural effect through the use of image and symbol, and the condensation effect of implied meaning in scenes. This film borrows Hardy’s stylistic methods and creatively transforms them for its own ends.

Winterbottom creates his film, Jude, as an indictment of society for its treatment of the outsiders who reject socially approved sexual relationships. In making his film through the lenses of social criticism, he borrows and transforms the original text, Jude the Obscure, written by Thomas Hardy. Winterbottom borrows only one side of Hardy’s two-layered narrative methods: the visualization of Sue. In Hardy’s novel, author/narrator reveals Sue’s reality through conveying her inner thought while he portrays Sue from the perspective of Jude. The visualization of Sue, limiting access to her consciousness, results in a discordance in Winterbottom’s Jude. It is produced in Sue’s characterization when she refuses to have a sexual relationship with Jude after she left Phillotson to live with Jude and she takes the road of self-abnegation after children’s death. Her change seems drastic and abrupt. A dissonance is also created in the film’s intention to criticize society which ostracizes non-conformists who refuse to enter into a legal contract of marriage. The film undermines its own argument as the appeal of Sue, a rebel against social convention, is lost by transforming Arabella into a good maternal figure. Despite the discordance, Winterbottom’s Jude achieves the followings: a dramatic effect through juxtaposed scenes and sudden reversal, the visual/aural effect through the use of image and symbol, and the condensation effect of implied meaning in scenes. This film borrows Hardy’s stylistic methods and creatively transforms them for its own ends.

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Winterbottom’s Jude, transformation, borrowing, discordance, social criticism, children’s death scene, image and symbol