The
novelist Thomas Hardy often portrayed honest people who suffered
a downfall because of how the industrial revolution corrupted
society. Michael Winterbottom, having directed Jude,
a television version of Hardy’s 1895 novel Jude the Obscure
in 1999, turned to the novelist’s The Mayor of Casterbridge
(1886) for inspiration for his latest film, entitled The
Claim. While in production, the provisional title
of the movie was "Kingdom Come," named for a mythical California
gold-rush Klondikish town in the Sierras where the story takes
place (though actually filmed in -30º weather at snowy 7,000-foot
Fortress Mountain in the Canadian Rockies amid occasional
gusts of 100 mile-an-hour winds). Winterbottom’s tale of damnation
on earth is perhaps an even more macabre plot than the one
in Hardy’s original novel. The movie title not only refers
to land claims but to emotional claims that the characters
have on one another. In 1847, twenty years before the film
begins, the town's wealthy owner Daniel Dillon (played by
Peter Mullan), while drunk, sold his wife and baby daughter
for the mining claim that made him rich, and in due course
we see his gold ingots piled high in a bank vault. Other gold
rush prospectors arrived in the town over the years to stake
claims, and soon a harmonious multiethnic community arose,
including Dillon’s Portuguese mistress Lucia (played by Milla
Jovovich), the owner of the local saloon and brothel. When
the film begins, railroad engineer Dalglish (played by Wes
Bentley) arrives in town along with Dillon’s destitute wife
Elena (played by Nastassja Kinski) and lovely teenage daughter
Hope (played by Sara Polley). The surveyor was assigned by
the Central Pacific Railroad to find the appropriate route
for train tracks that will unite East with West. The wife,
who was sickly and eventually died, wanted a better life for
her daughter, so she encouraged her to pursue Dalglish, a
man with a future. Eventually, Dillon provided the finest
house in town for his wife and daughter, but Dalglish filed
a claim for land below Kingdom Come, where the railroad would
run. Since gold prospecting had ended, the townspeople decided
to move to Lisboa, the new town christened by the railroad
company where trains were to stop, bringing new income to
the townspeople. Dillon, deserted in what would soon become
a ghost town, then went mad and committed suicide while burning
down Kingdom Come, including his gold ingots. The poor people
within the multiethnic community, including Chinese, lived
together peacefully despite mumbled accents that should have
been subtitled, as in My
Name is Joe (1999), another film starring Peter
Mullan. In short, the tyrant of Kingdom Come, who once had
the power to enforce his will through a public whipping, proved
unable to adjust to his own downfall. Thomas Hardy, thus,
says that the industrial revolution was adversely affecting
not only ordinary people but also prosperous small businesses
who could be easily marginalized by giant corporations. MH
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