The Claim [VHS]
by Michael Winterbottom
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VHS Tape Cover Information
Actor: Milla Jovovich, Nastassja Kinski, Peter Mullan, Sarah Polley, Wes BentleyDirector: Michael Winterbottom
Edition: VHS Tape
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
Running Time: 120 minutes
Release Date: 2001-12-26
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Publisher: MGM (Video & DVD)
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
VHS Movie Reviews of The Claim [VHS]
Movie Review: All that glitters...
Summary: 2 Stars
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...
Summary of The Claim [VHS]
Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge has been transplanted to the edge of the American frontier in this vivid drama that didn't receive the theatrical exposure it deserved. Although top young actors adorn the movie's ads, the central character--Daniel Dillon, a man who runs the gold rush town of Kingdom Come--is played by little-known Peter Mullen. In the dead of winter in 1849, three people arrive in town, changing irrevocably Dillon's life. One is Donald Dalglish (Wes Bentley), the clear-thinking leader of a railroad prospect crew who will determine where the railroad line--and a new line of wealth--will be built. The others are a mother and daughter (Nastassja Kinski, Sarah Polley) who have a past connection to Dillon and the knowledge of how he became rich. As events unfold--in pure Hardy fashion--Dillon finds himself facing a crossroads, with one path leading to redemption. The cast is uniformly brilliant, but special praise must go to Mullen, who carries the film's dramatic weight, and to Bentley, who is so composed in a role completely dissimilar to his breakthrough work in American Beauty. Director Michael Winterbottom (who adapted another Hardy piece with his film Jude) and cinematographer Alwin H. Kuchler have fashioned their film after Robert Altman's landmark McCabe and Mrs. Miller in the natural, earthy feel of a frontier town. The film opened in 2000 and deservedly appeared on a few top 10 lists, then was rereleased the following year. --Doug ThomasArt House & International VHS Video
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