Sad film

A lot of it is because it's based on a Thomas Hardy novel, The Mayor of Casteridge, and Thomas Hardy, though a great writer, is well-known for the tragedy in his books. When I read Tess of the D'Urbervilles in high school I literally pounded the book onto my desk in frustration because it was so goddamn depressing to the point of resembling a Lars von Trier movie; Tess (which, interestingly, was made into a movie by Roman Polanski and stars Nastassja Kinski, also in The Claim) is about a naive and poor peasant girl who is raped by her cousin, gets pregnant from said rape, loses the child, marries the love of her life only to be dumped by him when he finds out she has pre-marital sex from said rape....and many more plot points I won't spoil for you. But you get the idea that Hardy doesn't give his characters normal or easy lives and are frequently victims of other people's bad judgments, their own society and the hypocrisy of religion.

Beauty is in the moment, which is something we always find out too late

I think Thomas Hardy's most depressing is Jude the obscure. The film Jude is just horribly depressing. Good film but it will leave you hurt. He does have some lighter fare with Under the Greenwood Tree. Far from the Madding Crowd is good has some sad parts but it does have a decent ending.

To describe it as a "sad film" that "fills the hearth with sadness" is too one-dimensional of a description. Sure, it's morose like "McCabe & Mrs. Miller," unveiling the hard life of settlers in the high country of the Old West, but "The Claim" is superior to "McCabe" and less one-note.

There are lots of glimmerings of light: Lucia's beautiful singing at the saloon, Daniel & Lucia's joyful copulations in the first act, Lucia adamantly saying she doesn't want Daniel's money, Daniel's determination to reconcile with his abandoned wife & daughter and make things right, that sacrifices he makes in order to do this, the warm love that develops between Hope and Dalglish, the latter's spiritual growth in rejecting shallow casual sex, Lucia's excitement at the prospect of becoming a town entrepreneur, the love that develops between Bellanger and Annie, their wedding, Annie's escape from prostitution, Hope's rejection of her father's great wealth (which showed that she wasn't venal), the new hope of Lucia's boom town and the fact that all the main cast members -- except Daniel -- survive with a sense of hope (Elena's death was certain from the beginning).