Michael Winterbottom’s period epic tries to wed The Mayor of Casterbridge’s plot with McCabe & Mrs. Miller’s visuals, but it would take more than a marriage counselor to salvage the result. The setting is California in the Gold Rush of 1849, and the Michael Henchard protagonist is Daniel Dillon (Peter Bentley), who owns the mountain town of Kingdom Come. His world is about to unravel: the two women, Elena (Nastassja Kinski) and Hope (Sarah Polley), who’ve just arrived turn out to be the wife and daughter he sold long ago; and Dalglish (Wes Bentley), a surveyor for the Central Pacific, will challenge his hegemony by not bringing the railroad to town. As in Hardy’s novel, it all goes against our hero: he persuades Elena to remarry him, but she’s consumptive and won’t last long; meanwhile Dalglish has a fling with Dillon’s brothel-owning mistress, Lucia (Milla Jovovich), before turning to Hope.

Hardy’s Henchard anticipated modern psychology with his self-destructive streak; Winterbottom’s Dillon is just a man destroyed by circumstances — indeed the director has stripped out not only Hardy’s psychology but his characterizations. Hope in particular is stranded: she runs about unchaperoned in a way that was scarcely possible 150 years ago. The actors do what they can with nothing; Alwin Kuchlar’s cinematography would be more impressive if it didn’t seem so derivative of Altman’s film. By the end Michael Nyman’s gushy score did bring a tear to my eye, but this is still high-gloss Masterpiece Theatre piffle.