With intensity and resolve, stonemason Jude Fawley (Christopher Eccleston) aspires to get a college education, but circumstances work against his bookish ambitions in director Michael Winterbottom's haunting adaptation of Thomas Hardy's final novel, &NFi;Jude the Obscure&NFi_;. Kate Winslet co-stars as the lovely liberated cousin Jude falls in love with, and Rachel Griffiths plays the farmer's daughter who tricks him into matrimony.