Wow! Such a good movie.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

It's the Old West in Canada. A young man (Peter Mullan) trades his wife (Nastasja Kinski) and baby (later to turn into Sarah Polley) for a gold mine and years later becomes the benign dictator of the town of Kingdom Come. He builds a splendid home, along the lines of a slapdash version of Mad King Ludwig's.The railroad plans to pass by, but not through Kingdom Come. Along with the rush of people, there is Kinski, now terminally ill, and Polley, who does not know that Mullan is her father. Kinski asks for help and Mullan remarries her in what seems to be an attempt to undo the immoral act he earlier committed. Not that he's in any big hurry to get rid of his monumental stash of stone-heavy gold bars in the locked shed next to his house.Milla Jovovich is present as one of the more prominent whores in the flourishing cat house.You know -- whatever else this movie has or does not have -- it must be said that this is a talented line up of gorgeous babes. Kinski, Polley, and Jovovich. Murderer's Row of pulchritude. And Kinski, though now old enough to play a the mother of a grown woman, is stunning. Age cannot wither nor custom stale her. They all turn in professional performances too.It's all pretty tragic however. It's clear that Mullan is ridden with guilt and love but Kinski's destiny is fulfilled, so he's missed out on the most fruitful time they might have spent together. He's compelled to tell Polley that he's her real father and she stalks off into the snow without a word.Then there's that pesky railroad. Since it will run through the plain below, it leaves Mullan and his mountain empire high and dry. Everyone leaves Kingdom Come to establish the new railroad town down there -- somewhere.It's all too much for Mullan. He burns down the town he built and consigns himself to a snowy death.It's a very deliberately paced and realistic-looking Western. The clothes are suitably heavy and drab. The mountains are majestic and snow-veined but as cold and forbidding in their own quiet way as the people who populate the town. There is laughter and booze, but it all seems forced. Nobody's love is fully expressed. There's no operatic content.There's a little gun play too, but this is a Canadian movie and Canadian movies are always thoughtful, slow, a little dark, and lacking in scenes in which someone's head explodes or an arm is wrenched off or an eye gouged out. I can't even think of a Canadian film in which someone visits a dentist.I admire it for its location shooting and for the performances, however reined in they are by the script and direction. Ultimately it's a gloomy story. No one enjoys seeing someone utterly demolished in spirit on the screen, not even a miscreant like Mullan. At least he was capable of remorse.

Frank Cottrell Boyce is dismissive of screen writing books, but on the evidence of this disjointed, incoherent outing he may want to take a trip to the library. Bearing a superficial resemblance to The Mayor of Casterbridge, this film lacks dramatic tension, dramatic irony, humour, characters who we can love or loathe, and most essentially a plot that resolves itself on the basis of the choices the characters make. Hardy's novel traces the rise, fall, then rise again of a powerful, cantankerous individual. The novel's tragic irony is that the 'daughter' the Mayor sacrifices everything for is not, in fact, his biological daughter. This plot line is inexplicably discarded by Boyce. It robs the climax of any dramatic power, Winterbottom looking to compensate for the lack of emotional payoff with a show of pyrotechnics.Like Boyce, Winterbottom fails to do justice to the story. Daniel gives up all for his daughter, but the emotional impact is never relayed to the audience. Elena tells Daniel that to embrace Hope as a daughter he must tell her the truth. That conversation takes place with the camera behind Daniel and Elena, their faces masked in silhouette. Why cast actors of the caliber of Kinski and Mullan if you won't let the audience see them act in their most dramatic moments? The only father-daughter interaction between Daniel marrying Elena and the crucial scene where he tells her the truth, is a dance at the wedding relayed in a prosaic, underwhelming longshot. When Daniel comes to tell her of his past misdeed he does so matter-of-factly, she runs away, and the inner turmoil this must have caused for both individuals is never examined. It is symptomatic of the failure to manage any emotional arcs or beats in this film. Winterbottom does not seem to follow the basic rules of action-re-action. When Hope first reveals herself to Daniel with the rosary beads, there is shock - then nothing. A reflective moment, with Daniel fingering the beads, is called for but never offered up. Dalglish loves Hope, sleeps with someone else, blames it on his job, and is forgiven. A sub-plot involving a railroad engineer and a prostitute takes up more screen time than the Hope-Dalglish romance. At two points people are shot dead but we cut to life going on as normal, with no sign of grief or consequences for the community.The film looks like an amalgam of Winterbottom's Wonderland (the fireworks scene is recycled set-up for set-up) and Miller and Mrs. McCabe. However, it has neither the keenly felt human longing of the former or the frailty and mystery of Altman's latter.Perhaps in reaction to the less-than-inspiring efforts of his collaborators, Michael Nyman seems not to have bothered too much with this one. He re-jigs a few notes on his Wonderland score and layers it over The Claim. All the music did was take me out of the film and make me think how sad it is to see a genius plagiarizing his own work.The Claim looks nice in places, though the snow-covered pioneer town invites comparisons with Altman's masterpiece and once again falls short. There are some nice moments, most notably when Jovovich sings about Portugal. But it is all very bitty, ill-disciplined and under-realised. It looks like a work in progress rather than a finished film. Boyce, Winterbottom and Nyman have all done better in the past, and need to do so again.

Every time I catch this movie, I'm reminded of the haunting, overwhelming spell I experienced with works like Cimino's "Deer Hunter" or "Heaven's Gate" (as well as several others) that convey this raw feeling of "being there" mixed with lyrical, poetic power. They seem the result of a mysteriously invisible success at combining rhythm, camera work, set design, sound, acting and what not.Funny, though, how each time, I'm left with a drilling question: "what is *wrong* with this incredibly inspired movie?" I found some answers reading the following reviews: I almost completely second the views of1. sumrrain, April 25th 2001, who mostly nails my feelings better than I could have *AND* offers some possible explanations as to what prevents the movie from being even better;I found also found valuable ideas in the review by2. gpadillo, November 9th 2004: I haven't read Hardy's book, but I like to hear gpadillo's take on, amongst other things, what kind of adaptation we are dealing with here.Now, I personally feel the urge to give credit to Sarah Polley's performance. Her presence in most every scene she appears in is so intense and profound as we perceive the multiple layers and the strength in this girl much less fragile and lost than she appears. As I see it, she provides the second underlying main story, hidden literally by the more spectacular Mullan and Kinski, just as well as her character is sort of hidden and hushed to silence by the painful relationship between her parents.I can't think of a lot of "young women coming of age" characters portrayed this powerfully. Nathalie Portman in "Beautiful Girls" as well as Bryce Dallas Howard in "The Village" come to my mind; not much more, in my very subjective opinion. Both actresses which I have tremendous respect for (and I really couldn't care less if Portman made some career choices considered as "poor", or sometimes unfortunate...)This is one of the most ambitious and successful cinematic challenges undertaken in the last ten years, and I really think one can hardly afford to skip it if interested in what a big budget movie *still* can be nowadays.

Beautifully photographed, but slow moving epic about a king of a gold rush township with demons that haunts him to the point of madness. Having seen the HBO series Deadwood before this movie I find some similarities, but Deadwood has the upper hand in my opinion because of the more intense gritty realism depicted. Ultimately this fails due to my inability to feel anything for the characters - there really is no one to root for, it is "just" a depiction of human misery, suffering, greed and need. Allthoug I can understand the endings epic martyrdom I personally find it immensely stupid - Really - why not make sure the poor daughter gets her inheritance instead of getting the corrupt train engineer...