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