Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #18799 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-06-30
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 116 minutes

Special Features
16:9 Wide Screen
English
Region 2

Synopsis
In transporting Thomas Hardy's THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE to the American West, English director Michael Winterbottom has fashioned an audacious, epic anti-Western that is a haunting achievement. Set in 1849, the story concerns Mr. Dillon (Peter Mullan), the ruler of Kingdom Come, a snow-covered mining town in Northern California. The story opens with the arrival of Dalglish (Wes Bentley), a handsome surveyor for the Pacific Coast Railroad, who is searching for the most sensible way to turn the dream of a transcontinental railroad into a reality. Also drifting into town are the seriously ill Elena (Nastassja Kinski) and her daughter, Hope (Sarah Polley), who have ambiguous ties to Dillon. Immediately, Hope and Dalglish become acquainted, but their potential romance is threatened by the presence of Lucia (Milla Jovavich), a Portuguese madam who lives with Dillon. As Dalglish reaches a decision regarding the railroad, Dillon must painfully confront mistakes he's made in the past, triggering a series of tragic occurrences.
Winterbottom's lush, expansive film miraculously manages to retain the somber spirit of Hardy's classically English tale. Employing the techniques that made Robert Altman's MCCABE & MRS. MILLER such a breathtaking spectacle--including Alwin Kuchler's dazzling cinematography and Michael Nyman's mesmerizing score--Winterbottom proves once again that he is an accomplished filmmaker who isn't afraid to tackle any genre.

Customer Reviews

Hardy's morality tale exquisitely retold
In this gentle-paced and beautifully shot epic, the director has taken Hardy's 'Mayor of Casterbridge' from England to gold-rush America. In doing so he has preserved the novel's themes: the clash of the old world with the new, the lust for glory and the tragedy of personal ambition. The acting is exceptional, the scenery stunning, and the soundtrack by Nyman sets the mood perfectly. This is not a film for the MTV generation: although it is a simple morality tale it is told in a thoughtful and compelling way that rewards attention to its subtleties. A film for the soul.

Inner emptiness in a cold place
"There's no pleasure in it. A man loses heart"

Such is the admonition about gold that a weary prospector, after pouring a bag of nuggets out onto the table, gives young Daniel Dillon, newly arrived in the snowbound Sierra Nevada range during the California gold rush. Despite this less than encouraging counsel, Dillon trades for the miner's claim something most men would consider too dear to barter. Now, almost two decades later in 1868, Daniel's mine has spawned a town, Kingdom Come, and Dillon (Peter Mullan) is the benevolent despot that rules the settlement and everyone in it. Again, it's winter, and there's nothing for the prospectors to do but drink, gamble, carouse in the local brothel, and await the verdict of the Central Pacific survey party out to determine if the transcontinental trains will pass through KC. It's not too much of an exaggeration to say that the town will die if the railroad bypasses the community.

Wes Bentley plays Donald Dalglish, the rakish young engineer who leads the survey team. He's arrived in town escorting two ladies, recently widowed Elena (Nastassja Kinski) and Hope (Sarah Polley). Elena is dying of tuberculosis, and Hope is her teenaged daughter. It soon becomes apparent that the two women share a past with Dillon, who dumps Lucia, his significant other and the owner of the brothel, and invites Elena and Hope to move into his Victorian mansion. In the meantime, between frolics with the workin' gals, Dalglish becomes smitten with Hope.

The connection between Dillon, Elena and Hope is revealed early on. The plot is not so much concerned with who these characters are, but rather with the culmination of the morality play that began years before when Dillon ignored sound advice - a finale intensified to a sharp point by the Central Pacific's eventual verdict and Elena's illness.

I was somewhat confounded that I didn't like this movie more for it's indeed a richly photographed period piece. For me, the characters of Dillon and Dalglish just didn't click. Neither one was portrayed by the screenwriters to be either particularly endearing or hateful to the audience. Both are just regular guys, each a blend of both good and flawed traits, and therefore too nondescript to carry the weight of being the male leads. The Elena and Hope characters, while crucial to the storyline, were little more than indispensable props.

Actually, the most interesting part of the film for me - and I'm saying this without a smirk, really! - was the portrayal of the bordello. The film doesn't judge or glamorize the girls or the business they work at, which is to provide lonely men with emergency love and separate them from their money and gold in the process. And the film doesn't make the working conditions any more miserable than might be expected in any shantytown place in the snowed-under Sierras of the 1860s. There's one scene where the house manager yells a reminder through the door to one of her staff, "Be sure and collect his money - you aren't giving it away for free!" Hmmph! That's what my wife shouts after me as I drive off to my 9 to 5 every morning.

A Visually Stunning Film, Interesting, Too, if the Viewer Has Read up on Its Plot Aforehand
I would urge Amazon's WWW site's users to obtain and to view this film, but with a warning. The narrative of the film does not reveal itself very clearly. I even had read the novel ("The Mayor of Casterbridge") by Thomas Hardy on which the film was based (with a transfer from a British to an American Western setting, with changes in the names of the characters), but had read that great work too long ago to be able to recall enough of it to follow clearly what the film, too, was portraying. I did manage to "get the gist of it" despite a lot of confusion along the way, but it was a summary of the action of the motion picture, on a WWW site that made it all congeal together, "after the fact" of having viewed it, rather than adequate clues of a visual sort or from the dialogue from the movie itself while I first was watching it.

The film is visually very beautiful. The mountainous California scenery is magnificent and rather well and atmospherically filmed. The young male actor, Wes Bentley, who plays the role of Dalglish, the railroad planner, provides the main human pulchritude, very handsome and youtfully appealing, real "eye candy". His acting is less than stunning, perhaps at least in part due to the apparent need to affect a foreign accent that he conveys with only intermittent ability to convince. One of the problems, though, that this film has with conveying the narrative is that so much attention on the character of Dalglish (Bentley), especially so near to the beginning of the movie, distracts the viewer's attention from the plight (until revived later as the action progresses) of Daniel Dillon (played by Peter Mullan), who, after all, is the central character around whose fate this cinematic work turns. What occurs in flashbacks to the past and what is happening in the action's present also is unclear, creating potential confusion for the viewer.

The film might have benefitted from a better and more assertive score. Too much happens without the evocative enhancement that a more skillful and prominent score would have provided.

A good motion picture this is, in short, but do some "homework" to prepare yourself to follow the story that this film recounts with such visual beauty. I would like to see my DVD of this movie a few more times, to feast the eyes on the lofty loveliness of the mountain setting and on the boyishly bearded beauty of Wes Bentley, so, I guess that this is adequate to have provoked that opening, decided recommendation to you from me!