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The Claim [2001]
![The Claim [2001]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51DN2KJ801L._SL160_.jpg)
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All that glitters...
Review date: 2008-11-01 Rating: 4 out of 10
It may be harsh to say that Michael Winterbottom is one of the most consistently bad directors working today, but his emphasis on often counterproductive technique at the expense of story or character has resulted in an almost unbroken run of poor films from promising material - which in many ways is far worse than making bad films out of videogames. Ever the alchemist, once again he manages to turn gold into base metal with The Claim, a fairly lavish version of Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge relocated to the California mountains during the Gold Rush. While the basic story transposes rather well - a down on his luck prospector who sold his wife and child for a gold claim and rose to rule the town that grew up around it finds himself on the road to destruction when they reappear and he attempts to make amends - it's little more than an underdeveloped skeletal outline that never grips, feeling less an attempt at subtlety, more underwritten.
While it throws out the complexity of the source material, there's enough left here that could have made a good adult Western drama in other hands, especially in the neat turn around from genre tradition that sees Peter Mullan's all-powerful Mayor of Kingdom Come trying to persuade Wes Bentley's surveyor to drive the railroad through his town to ensure its growth. Yet it never gets to the heart of the story, playing the big scenes for less than they're worth (hard to believe any director could botch a scene of Mullan harnessing the whole town to manhaul his marital home across the snow and into the heart of town, but Winterbottom manages it) and constantly pushing characters and story into the background without ever placing anything in the foreground to compensate. Worse, no present-day action in the film has any real consequence, which is fairly disastrous for a morality play about consequences. It's the kind of film where people get killed and their death makes no impression on the emotions or actions of anyone around them leaving a dreary, inconsequential film with no drive.
Rather than story or character, Winterbottom seems interested in recreating the world of McCabe and Mrs Miller, but he's taken all the worst of Altman without any of the best. There may be an occasional improvised feel, but it's rarely harnessed to the film's benefit, feeling like undisciplined self-indulgence and all too symptomatic of the way that far too much of the film is played out of focus, both metaphorically and literally. Indeed, it often feels like a film whose few strengths have little to do with the director. Peter Mullan is superb as the Mayor, convincingly essaying the kind of man who can rule an entire town by sheer force of will alone, but while you understand his emptiness, the film never allows you to feel for it, leaving the finale a rather empty spectacle rather than genuine tragedy. If anything, the film's tragedy is that Mullan didn't get a film worthy of his performance. Unfortunately the supporting performances are rather dull and characterless: Nastassja Kinski has little to do but waste away, Sarah Polley isn't able to do much with her cardboard good girl, Milla Jovovich lacks the moxie her saloon manger cries out for while Wes Bentley tries to coast on charisma without ever having enough to do the trick. Instead they're outshone by production designer Mark Tildesley's superbly recreated snowy mountain town and a surprisingly powerful and heartfelt Michael Nyman score that abandons his usual mathematical masturbation for something more grandiose and passionate. And you know what they say about shows where you come out humming the scenery...
Pathe's DVD has a good 2.35:1 widescreen transfer but the only extra is the film's trailer.
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Reviews
Black and white in colour: the greatest revisionist western of this decade.
Review date: 2008-03-01 Rating: 10 out of 10
I can see why this particular film (and many of the director's other works) had such a hard time finding an audience when first released in 2000 - what with the endlessly roaming camera and those flashbacks that seem to come out of nowhere - but for me personally, the problems have less to do with Winterbottom's aesthetic choices as a filmmaker and more to do with audiences pre-conceived opinions about the film due to poor promotion and marketing. In my opinion, the film was woefully misrepresented by the people at Fox Pathè (the distributors) and even by the producers themselves, who seemed to announce The Claim as something of a traditional western along the lines of Unforgiven, or even as a precursor to the glossy, chocolate-box picture Cold Mountain (a film greatly inferior to this). Both of these examples are, however, worlds away from the style and atmosphere of The Claim, with Winterbottom and his screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce here providing an almost biblical downward spiral for their central characters that is as far removed from Hollywood as you can possibly get.
As you can probably deduce from the title of this review, The Claim is a bleak film, dealing with characters pushed to the edge and pent up with all manner of secret shame, guilt and fury. The story takes its inspiration from Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge, but it is in no way a straight interpretation, but more of a re-investigation and analysis into that central predicament. The story therefore becomes a simple morality tale, though made all the more austere through the director's unwillingness to complicate the proceedings with bouts of melodrama or sentimentality. However, Winterbottom's films are merely simplistic on a superficial level. Like his cinematic countryman Mike Leigh, he creates work from a rough sketch that is elaborated on by his actors as the whole process goes along. Thus, in a way, the act of making a film is a lot like the building of the railroad here, and the stark changes that fall into place within the mood of the dwellers of the central town, Kingdom Come, are therefore representative of the always-shifting viewpoints and overlapping narrative timelines that emerge as the picture unfolds.
The railroad that is so central to the proceedings here has a number of meanings subtextually linked to its involvement in the plot. It is a representation of an uncertain future; about change and progress - the complete antithesis of everything that the character of Dillon represents. It is also the device that brings the pivotal outsiders into town (Dalglish, the charismatic railroad surveyor replete with a posse of men, the dying immigrant Elena, stricken with T.B. and finally - and most importantly - the aptly-named Hope; Elena's daughter here in town to search out her long-lost father). Added to this troika of outsiders, we also have the headstrong and exotic Lucile, Dillon's mistress and owner of the local whorehouse where Dalglish's wayward men spend most of their spare time. Here, the remarkable thing is how Boyce manages to bring the characters together, establishing relationships slowly, like an extended chamber piece. As the story progresses, the emphasis on Lucile, Elena and Dalglish become less apparent, as they begin to merge into the not-too-distant background as Dillon and Hope take precedence over the narrative at hand.
Despite the numerous allusions and comparisons to Robert Altman's classic anti-western McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Winterbottom's directorial style is more indebted to European filmmakers, like Fassbinder, Kieslowski and Herzog; as he composes his images in a pallet of stark monochrome, with black-clad figures frost-bitten by snow juxtaposing with the void-like whiteness of the locale; all the while using the editing to break or undermine the rhythm (unlike other films of this genre, that are all about 'establishing' rhythm). The Altman references are merely superficial ciphers, with the exterior of snowbound locations, crumbling bordellos and ever-winding railroads giving way to a depiction of obsession and redemption that has more in common with a film like Fitzcaralldo. It is the character of Dillon that really carries the film, as the director singles him out as a lost soul whilst the town he once loved becomes a metaphor for his prevailing greed and anguish; an idea that goes alongside that other figurative interpretation as the town as a literal whorehouse (with Lucile its newly appointed mayor/Madame); all allowing Winterbottom to draw parallels with a film like Quarelle or Lola by Fassbinder or the latter's inspiration, The Blue Angel.
That final scene offers us a haunting evocation of pride in the face of defeat and has the ability to work its way into your subconscious via Winterbottom's use of almost universal iconography. A searing depiction of one man's personal redemption played out against the largest scale; with the key elements of power, betrayal, identity, ambition and loss being worked into every subtle nuance of the script to from a rich tapestry of inter-linked vignettes that come together to create a sort-of Greek-tragedy amidst the decline of the 'wild west'. As Michael Nyman's evocative, bombastic, Morriconne-inspired score begins to intensify, the images of Dillon - eyes devoid of expression as he marches through the town slowly crumbling all around him - plays off an early scene in which a horse caught in a munitions explosion gallops off into the hill, engulfed by flames.
surreal images
Review date: 2008-01-15 Rating: 10 out of 10
The story-line comes from Hardy, so we needn't judge that here. What really distinguishes this film is the photography. It is full of memorable surreal images. As for the acting, all three of the leading ladies are superb, the men I think not quite.
Beautifully raw, hard, cold, painful, slow, and sad film
Review date: 2004-12-15 Rating: 10 out of 10
Beautifully raw, hard, cold, painful, slow, and sad film about European goldhunters/settlers in America some 140 years ago. Although I wasn't there when it happened and I didn't know it could be continuously snowing in California USA, it appeared very plausible as a realistic portrait of how things must have been in America in the days that my great-grandfather was a young boy. Some minor points though: I don't particularly like flashbacks and blurred imagery, and I found the ones in this film to appear a bit messy, experimental and therefore annoying, just like Michael Nyman's soundtrack to this film. Also, I found the characters to be a bit superficial, some of them even unrealistically shallow. If the story had been given a bit more sequence and finesse, I have a very strong suspicion that this could have been a truly great movie.
Inner emptiness in a cold place
Review date: 2003-03-21 Rating: 6 out of 10
"There's no pleasure in it. A man loses heart"
Such is the admonition about gold that a weary prospector, after pouring a bag of nuggets out onto the table, gives young Daniel Dillon, newly arrived in the snowbound Sierra Nevada range during the California gold rush. Despite this less than encouraging counsel, Dillon trades for the miner's claim something most men would consider too dear to barter. Now, almost two decades later in 1868, Daniel's mine has spawned a town, Kingdom Come, and Dillon (Peter Mullan) is the benevolent despot that rules the settlement and everyone in it. Again, it's winter, and there's nothing for the prospectors to do but drink, gamble, carouse in the local brothel, and await the verdict of the Central Pacific survey party out to determine if the transcontinental trains will pass through KC. It's not too much of an exaggeration to say that the town will die if the railroad bypasses the community.
Wes Bentley plays Donald Dalglish, the rakish young engineer who leads the survey team. He's arrived in town escorting two ladies, recently widowed Elena (Nastassja Kinski) and Hope (Sarah Polley). Elena is dying of tuberculosis, and Hope is her teenaged daughter. It soon becomes apparent that the two women share a past with Dillon, who dumps Lucia, his significant other and the owner of the brothel, and invites Elena and Hope to move into his Victorian mansion. In the meantime, between frolics with the workin' gals, Dalglish becomes smitten with Hope.
The connection between Dillon, Elena and Hope is revealed early on. The plot is not so much concerned with who these characters are, but rather with the culmination of the morality play that began years before when Dillon ignored sound advice - a finale intensified to a sharp point by the Central Pacific's eventual verdict and Elena's illness.
I was somewhat confounded that I didn't like this movie more for it's indeed a richly photographed period piece. For me, the characters of Dillon and Dalglish just didn't click. Neither one was portrayed by the screenwriters to be either particularly endearing or hateful to the audience. Both are just regular guys, each a blend of both good and flawed traits, and therefore too nondescript to carry the weight of being the male leads. The Elena and Hope characters, while crucial to the storyline, were little more than indispensable props.
Actually, the most interesting part of the film for me - and I'm saying this without a smirk, really! - was the portrayal of the bordello. The film doesn't judge or glamorize the girls or the business they work at, which is to provide lonely men with emergency love and separate them from their money and gold in the process. And the film doesn't make the working conditions any more miserable than might be expected in any shantytown place in the snowed-under Sierras of the 1860s. There's one scene where the house manager yells a reminder through the door to one of her staff, "Be sure and collect his money - you aren't giving it away for free!" Hmmph! That's what my wife shouts after me as I drive off to my 9 to 5 every morning.
Product Details/Specifications
Actor(s):
Sarah Polley
Wes Bentley
Milla Jovovich
Peter Mullan
Nastassja Kinski
Creators:
Wes Bentley (Primary Contributor)
Peter Mullan (Primary Contributor)
Alexis Lloyd (Producer)
Andrea Calderwood (Producer)
Andrew Eaton (Producer)
Anita Overland (Producer)
David M. Thompson (Producer)
Frank Cottrell Boyce (Writer)
Thomas Hardy (Writer)
Director(s):
Recording label: Pathe Distribution
Manufacturer: Pathe Distribution
EAN: 5060002830130
Binding: DVD
Number of items: 1
Format: PAL, Widescreen,
Release date: 2003-06-30
Number of discs: 1
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Audience rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
Region code: 2
Running time: 116 minutes
Theatrical release date: 2001-11-08
Language: English (Original Language)