The Claim film review

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THE CLAIM

The Claim is a film about guilt and hope set in the aftermath of the Californian Gold Rush of 1849. It is an eloquent and sensitively told story loosely based on Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge and represents director Michael Winterbottom's second, and more successful, attempt at bringing Hardy to the big screen after 1996's Jude.

At times this new film is reminiscent of both Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate and Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo. Like Heaven's Gate it portrays immigrant lifestyle at a crucial point in American history (the development of the West Coast) and places the personal amidst a grand period of social upheaval, and like Fitzcarraldo it portrays grand, albeit unsettling, gestures. The stunning visual style of The Claim with its sweeping camerawork and exquisite location shooting is also a match for these two films.

Peter Mullan plays Dillon, the Irish owner of Kingdom Come, a small town built on the fortune of the Gold Rush. Twenty years previously, Dillon staked his claim to the town by selling his young Polish wife (Nastassja Kinski) and their daughter Hope. Although the boom is now over, his townsfolk enjoy a relatively harmonious existence under Dillon's iron rule, with social activity centred around the local saloon and its bevy of prostitutes led by Dillon's erstwhile girlfriend Lucia (Milla Jovovich).

Dillon's rule as well as his grasp on reality are soon threatened by two arrivals to the town. The wife and child he abandoned so many years ago return penniless and asking for his support. Then the Pacific Railway Company, led by Donald Dalglish (Wes Bentley) arrive to scout Kingdom Come as a possible stopping point for the first cross-country railway they are building. Dillon realises that the railway would open up his town to greater wealth and welcomes the idea warmly while Dalglish's good looks cause much excitement among the town's ladyfolk, not least Lucia and Hope (Sarah Polley). The film charts the developing relationships between these characters.