This movie should have been titled "Trudging through Snow," because that's all I remember from it. Thank goodness I saw it on video because I was able to fast-forward through many of the "trudging through snow" scenes. Sometimes people were trudging, sometimes horses, sometimes horses and people--but trudging, trudging, trudging. When any character went from one scene to another, the audience was forced to watch the entire walk through the snow from building to building--even if the buildings were miles apart. Hey, I got it, there's lots of snow there--all right, give us a break! It seemed to me that the movie wanted to prove to people that California is not just the beautiful, sunny, beachy place people think of, so it showed us a comparison with the northern Canadian Rockies.<br /><br />I watched the whole thing because of the link with Hardy's "Mayor of Casterbridge." Both Hardy and the movie portrayed a dark, negative story, but Hardy's seemed more beautiful and more real to me. I know it's wrong to compare the two, but if the filmmakers intend to make money using someone else's material, then they should expect the comparisons.<br /><br />Kinski, Mullan and Jovovich did a decent job of acting. Pollan played the usual innocent looking young teenager she always plays--boring. Bentley seemed a bit miscast. Bentley played the role analogous to Donald Farfrae from the novel. Farfrae had extreme charisma which arose from his good looks and his magical singing of old ballads. Bentley couldn't carry a tune in a bucket. Bentley had none of Farfrae's charisma, which disappointed me, even though I know that the movie didn't have to copy the book.<br /><br />The greasy hair and minimal makeup on the characters gave the movie more realism, but I kept feeling the urge to throw all the actors into a bathtub and give the women bobby pins with the order to either wear their hair down or pin it up all the way. The half-pinned-up-half straggly hairstyle that they all wore was annoying.<br /><br />Instead of spending so much effort on creating realistic stark scenes, the filmmakers should have put more effort into creating memorable characters. I didn't feel any empathy for any of the characters, with the possible exceptions of the Kinski character, and Mullan's character toward the end of the movie. Jovovich decently portrayed a Hardyesque "survivor," though I felt that the director might have used her talents a bit better.<br /><br />By the way, the reviewer who posted the plot summary at this site stated that Jovovich was the daughter, when it was actually Pollan.