It is a bit like Sean Connery as James Bond. You could reason he is totally unsuited to the part, and quite unlike Bond in the novels, and logically you would be correct. But he made the part his own and will always be the definitive Bond.
Yes, Christie is badly cast (and IMHO her acting is the weakest of the four leads as well) but she will always be the definitive Bathsheba, no matter how many new versions are filmed, despite looking more suited to Carnaby Street than Casterbridge.

Y'all are crazy.
Julie Christie was absolutely breathtaking in this movie & gave a great performance.
in this period of her career she was literally the "it" girl.
I saw her in an ice cream parlor w/Warren Beatty in L.A. Of course everyone tried to be too cool to care but Lord,
those two were gorgeous back in the day.

I just watched this movie today on TCM, and I was very distracted by Julie Christie's lips. She has thick lips anyway, but what I determined was bothersome was the lipstick so pale, it was close to white. Very unnatural-looking, and that's a 60's thing, right? Women have been using makeup for ages, but I believe lipstick was always a red or rosy color; not until the sixties did that pale frosted look start to appear.
Once you zero in on that, you start noticing how all the other characters around her, men and women, have normal-colored lips. And then you can't stop observing Julie's face those gorgeously blue eyes and those thick lips as if in the grip of death.

Could it be that the soft focus represents how Bathsheba Everdene appears in the soldier's eyes? That was my impression.

I thought that Stamp wasn't very well cast at all. He was the weakest of the leads.He was just saying words rather than being the character.

Terence Stamp looked very "sixties," too. But I thought he and Julie Christie had great chemistry, and I thought their performances and the movie both hold up well today.

Speaking as someone who lived through the 60's, no.
What we got here is failure to communicate!
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I disagree completely. A near perfect film. Period.

Yeah whatever. The bigger problem than the hairdo, however, was her performance - not outright bad, but without a doubt the weakest of the 4 leads by far. She always remained a blandish, superficial cipher, like a vacuum or a black hole around which Bates, Finch & Stamp were circling (and the latter two eventually fell in).
"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan

I agree coompletely. Other than her presence (plus her shallow acting) the film would have been a classic. Same with Zhivago.