- Cast Away
At the beginning of the film I really didn't care about what happened to this FedEx guy who seems to let work take precedence over the rest of his life. Like “The Family Guy” except that Chuck Noland doesn’t look like he’s having fun. The moment he says “I’ll be right back,” we also know that he hasn't watched many horror movies. When the FedEx plane goes down in the storm you almost wish he’d just die as you blame him for one of the crew dying.
- The Emperor’s New Groove
- Vertical Limit
- Quills by Phillip Kaufman.
- The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle
- Almost Famous by Cameron Crowe.
- Traffic by Steven Soderbergh.
- The Claim by Michael Winterbottom.
I thought about comparing this to Hardy’s “The Mayor of Casterbridge” but that would be unfair. There is just so much of the novel that is undeveloped in the movie that it would make little sense. The review would be depressing and serve merely to point out faults, deviations and the like. Yes, it is based on the novel but not especially so.
Instead of Hardy’s Wessex, we have the American Rockies and a place called KIngdom Come where Daniel Dillon (played by Peter Mullan) is the Michael Henchard character as the sheriff of this town who was doing rather well for himself. Until two major things come into his life: his wife and daughter, whom he sold for “The Claim” of the title; and the railroad, personified by the engineer Donald Dalglish (Farfrae of the novel) played by Wes Bentley.
These change both his life and his fortunes significantly. He sees a chance to make good with his now-dying wife and his daughter, who has no idea that he is her father. Against this we see the way that life is bending to the railroad: fortunes are being made or lost due to it and the commerce it can bring while the old-guard who made their money with gold are left in the cold, literally.
As soon as Dillon tells his daughter Hope (played by Sarah Polley) that he is her real father and explains what happened those years ago (as we have had gradually revealed to us through his flashbacks), she hates him and goes to find the man she believes she loves, Dalglish. He has just decided the railroad shall not pass through Kingdom Come, condemning that town while making the wealth of Lucia (played by Milla Jovovich) who Dillon spurned as a lover in order to make good with his wife. In moments Dillon’s life is in tatters and his town in flames, by his own hand. His last moments are spent crying over what could or should have been and he dies, left out in the cold. When the new town’s residents see the smoke, they rush to Kingdom Come but it is too late. The town is nothing, just as it had been once and Dillon is no more.
Some shots struck me as odd. We seem to be given out-of-focus or distant shots without explanation and those of the occupants of horse-drawn carriages appear more as visitors to a theme park on a roller coaster. It was generally a good film but I was left less touched than I felt I should have. Perhaps I resented it for not being a film adaptation of the novel but a new film centred around a couple of the novel’s key moments. There was nothing particularly wrong with it, it just felt as though more could have been right.
- State and Main by David Mamet.
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