An Understated, Minimalist Old West in Elusive ‘Claim’

To watch Michael Winterbottom’s audacious “The Claim” is to wish Cecil B. DeMille had the idea first of transposing Thomas Hardy’s “The Mayor of Casterbridge” to Northern California two decades after the discovery of gold in 1848.

The material would have been perfect for DeMille, for at heart it’s a quintessential Victorian morality tale as well as an epic frontier saga. DeMille would have set the screen on fire with his passion for storytelling, his sense of adventure and the grand scale of his vision. His version might not have been subtle, but it would have been robust and fun.

Winterbottom, on the other hand, is subtle to the point of obscurity. He does share with DeMille a powerful sense of the visual, but he and writer Frank Cottrell Boyce treat this saga of America’s Old West as the stuff of a European art film--and one with an ironic modernist sensibility at that.

Winterbottom is so relentlessly elliptical that at times the film is needlessly hard to follow, with a flashback so swift and fragmentary that you’re not sure what to make of it until the film’s conclusion. This minimalist approach carries over to the characters: They are so pared down we don’t get enough sense of them as fully dimensioned individuals to involve us in their fates.

As a result, the film, while affecting, should have greater impact. (It may be that those of us of Gold Rush ancestry will feel especially let down.)

It’s 1867, and Peter Mullan’s Daniel Dillon is lord of all he surveys. He long ago struck it rich, and his impressive stash of gold bars provides the foundation of the bustling Sierra Nevada mining town, Kingdom Come, that he built and where his word is law. A sturdy, bearded man in middle age, he shares his bed with the lovely Lucia (Milla Jovovich), the young Portuguese madam of the local saloon and brothel, where she tries to wow the locals with songs in her native language sung with a Dietrich-like world-weariness. Dillon would seem to have it made, but his life is about to be turned upside down by some newcomers.

Arriving nearly simultaneously are a beautiful but ailing woman, Elena (Nastassja Kinski), a Polish immigrant, with her pretty late-teens daughter Hope (Sarah Polley), described as related to Dillon in some way; and Dalgleish (Wes Bentley), chief engineer of the Central Pacific. Dalgleish has come with a team of men to map out a rail route that on May 10, 1869, at Promontory Point, Utah, will connect the Central Pacific with the Union Pacific to create America’s first transcontinental railroad.

It is Elena who has the greatest impact upon Dillon, who is thunderstruck by her arrival. He abruptly breaks off with Lucia, giving her the deed to the saloon-brothel, marries Elena with much fanfare, having hauled to town a fashionable prefab octagon house that will be their home. He makes every effort to provide Elena with the most advanced medical treatment available. Meanwhile, Dalgleish and Hope are drawn to each other, while Lucia soon realizes her future security lies in making sure she can relocate her business alongside the new railroad track.

The increasingly tormented Dillon is a man with a secret, a terrible one at that, while the consumptive Elena uses her rapidly waning strength to urge Hope to pursue Dalgleish if he is in fact her true love. (How can Hope know how she feels about him or how he feels about her? They have spent so little time together and have spoken even less.) These emotion-charged developments are played out with the utmost reticence.

The look of the film is terrific, and the actors, carefully cast, perform admirably; Michael Nyman’s score soars and cascades. Although Winterbottom, whose previous foray with Hardy was the more effective “Jude,” displays plenty of style, his film seems as desaturated as the color in his images. There is in the film the sense of the folly and grandeur of “Heaven’s Gate” and something of the rich texture and sophistication of “McCabe and Mrs. Miller,” but sadly the film is so elusive, so distant, that it never seems more than half-alive.

* MPAA rating: R, for sexuality and some language and violence. Times guidelines: language, adult themes and situations.

‘The Claim’

Wes Bentley: Dalgleish

Milla Jovovich: Lucia

Nastassja Kinski: Elena

Peter Mullan: Daniel Dillon

Sarah Polley: Hope

A United Artists presentation in association with Pathe Pictures, the Arts Council of England, Le Studio Canal Plus, BBC Films and Alliance Atlantis of a Revolution Films/DB Entertainment and Grosvenor Park Production. Director Michael Winterbottom. Producer Andrew Eaton. Executive producer Martin Katz. Screenplay by Frank Cottrell Boyce; inspired by Thomas Hardy’s “The Mayor of Casterbridge.” Cinematographer Alwin Kuchler. Editor Trevor Waite. Music Michael Nyman. Costumes Joanne Hansen. Production designers Mark Tildesley and Ken Rempel. Set decorator Paul Healy. Running time: 2 hours.

Exclusively at the AMC Century 14, 10250 Santa Monica Blvd., Century City Shopping Center, (310) 553-8900.