The Claim

7/21/2015

The Casterbridge Claim. "Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven" Michael Winterbottom directs what is in essence a Western version of Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge. It's Sierra Nevada, California, 1867 and the pioneer town of Kingdom Come is thriving under the strict but effective rule of Daniel Dillon (Peter Mullan). Dillon came by way of a gold claim many years earlier by way of a trade, the barter? His wife and child. But now the past is about to catch up with him and Kingdom Come could well turn out to be his burning hell... Right off the bat it has to be said that The Claim is a difficult film to recommend, even to Western movie lovers. It's deliberately slow and purposely elegiac and ethereal. The literary aspects of the narrative posit

8/17/2019

***The beginning and end of a boom town in the Sierra Nevadas*** During the California gold rush of 1849 a desperate man establishes a boom town in the Sierra Nevadas. Eighteen years later his abandoned wife & daughter (Nastassja Kinski & Sarah Polley) ride into town and turn his life (Peter Mullan) upside down. Milla Jovovich plays his singing saloon babe while Wes Bentley is on hand as a surveyor for the railroad that’s coming through. “The Claim” (2000) is a top-of-the-line Western that inexplicably fell through the cracks when it was released. It has similarities to “McCabe & Mrs. Miller” (1971), but with more interesting characters, a more compelling story and spectacular locations, not to mention less focus on a house of ill repute. If you appreciate grim, realistic West