Dir: Michael Winterbottom
Star: Wes Bentley, Peter Mullan, Milla Jovovich, Nastassja Kinski

So, as I was watching this, I was working on a review that focused on how much this felt like an adaptation of a Thomas Hardy novel – if Hardy had been born in Tombstone, rather than Dorset. But literally the first thing I found when post-Googling it said: “The screenplay by Frank Cottrell Boyce is loosely based on the novel The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy”

Well, bugger. There goes my outline.

Ah, screw it. The basic principal still seem to hold good, even though Casterbridge is one of Hardy’s works I haven’t actually read [much though I love Tess of the D’Urbevilles, even if I confess my interest was originally perhaps less than entirely literate]. It’s social tragedy, for want of a better phrase, which feels like a pessimistic version of Charles Dickens. Reading Dickens, you tend to get the feeling that things will turn out for the best; Hardy, however, provides no such hope. Things will go from bad to worse, despite – or perhaps, because of – the characters’ best efforts otherwise. Boyce and director Winterbottom nail that here, right from the moment we first see Kinski, coughing up a storm and looking so pale, she might already be a forlorn spirit. Yeah, this is not going to end well, for anyone concerned.

And so it proves. The setting is the Californian gold-rush town of Kingdom Come, founded and ruled over by Daniel Dillon (Mullan). Into his fiefdom comes railway surveyor Donald Dalglish (Bentley), who is planning a line for the railroad, which may or may not go through the town, giving him significant leverage. Also newly arrived are Elena Burn (Kinski) and her teenage daughter Hope (Sarah Polley), with the mother seeking to meet Dillon. It turns out she was once married to him, but along with the newly-born Hope, was traded to a disgruntled miner in exchange for his claim – which ended up turning into Kingdom Come, after Dillon struck it rich. He is prepared to do right by his wife, who is now terminally ill, and only concerned about Hope’s future, not her own, and agrees to marry Elena once again. This decision sets him against his current lover, Lucia (Jovovich), who does not take kindly to being thrown to one side.

There’s certainly a loose grip of nationality present here, even past the shift of the entire story from Wessex to Old West. Bentley, born in Arkansas, plays a Scot, while an actual Scot, Mullan, portrays an Irishman. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Jovovich is inexplicably a Portuguese character, which makes Kinski’s geographical shift from Germany to Poland seem relatively trivial. Most are fine, though being so used to seeing Milla kicking zombie ass, it takes a bit of adjustment to seeing her in a petticoat, playing the owner/madam of the town’s saloon/brothel. For Kinski, of course, this is not her first time at the “tragic heroine in a Hardy novel” rodeo – I note that Winterbottom also did Jude a few years earlier – and she looks suitably wan as she slowly fades away to – and I trust I’m not spoiling this for anyone – her eventual demise. It doesn’t appear to be an enormous stretch for her talents, and I can imagine the director passing her acting notes such as “Look iller”.

With the past driving a nail through Dillon’s soul, it’s time for the present to kick in, when Dalglish announces the railroad will bypass Kingdom Come, effectively killing the town. Worse, it’ll be going through the valley below, where Lucia has now set up her shop/saloon/brothel, effectively killing off Dillon’s town. What’s a disgruntled former land-baron to do? In a sharp diversion from Casterbridge, the answer here is go out in a blaze of glory, partly as a burnt offering to atone for past misdeeds, partly as a gigantic, fiery middle-finger to everyone who has bailed on him – even though he’s not actually a bad man, by any means [especially if you contrast him with somebody like Al Swearengen from Deadwood]. Fate, it seems, just does not want to reward him with happiness. In this aspect, there’s something of a film from the other Kinski, Fitzcarraldo, and the scene where Dillon has his entire house dragged through the town’s streets, as an ostentatious wedding present to Elena, may be a particular nod to it.

It’s a grand but empty theatrical gesture, and the same could probably be said of the film as a whole. It looks lovely, in part due to the majestic grandeur of the locations (supposedly the Sierra Nevada range in California, actually the Colorado Rockies), in part the work of cinematographer Alwin Küchler. Yet, things happen too often in a vacuum, with no apparent justification than because they are a striking image. For instance, at one point, the carriage carrying Dalglish’s supply of nitroglycerin takes one too many jolts and explodes. It serves no purpose to the plot, is never referred to again, and seems to exists purely so Winterbottom can have a shot of a horse, galloping away in (digital) flames. Undeniably impressive, it’s only afterward that you realize it was an empty spectacle, one serving no purpose at all in terms of the story or character development.

The result is a film that can be little more than appreciated and applauded on a technical level, since it largely fails to engage a connection between the audience and its players. It’s never quite clear with whom we are expected to empathize. Dalglish is closest to a conventional hero, and much is initially made of his burgeoning relationship with Hope. Yet he is largely shuffled to one side in the second half, in favor of Dillon – admittedly, a more interesting creature – who is initially set up as if he’s going to be the villain of the piece. Turns out, there really isn’t one: the conflict here is more internal, and it may partly be this, which keeps the film feeling as emotionally chilly as the high-altitude wilderness in which it is set.