"That's a nice-a donut."
Friday, May 12, 2006
North Country (2005)
Director Niki Caro followed up her critically acclaimed Kiwi film Whale Rider with her first studio picture, North Country. This was a rather interesting project to choose next, as they are very different films. The former is a small, personal coming-of-age tale of a young girl in a New Zealand tribe. While North Country is a fictionalized version of a true story about one of the first major sexual harassment cases in the United States. One thing that is common between them, though, is a strong female lead character.
In the cold, hockey-obsessed North Country of Minnesota that character is Josey Aimes (Charlize Theron). She takes her teenage son and leaves her abusive husband, and through her friend Glory (Frances McDormand) eventually finds work at the local iron mines. It's a very dirty job - a man's job. Or at least that is what the male (and even some of the female) workers would have you believe. Most of them are not happy that they have to work with women (which had been established after a previous legal decision), and in fact they often show their disdain by treating Josey and the others very poorly. They call them names, touch them, write obscene messages, and other things that most of us would agree are very vulgar and inappropriate. Caro makes peculiar use of intermittent flashforwards throughout the course of the film, showing brief courtroom scenes after various incidents. Eventually Josey manages to talk lawyer Bill White (Woody Harrelson) into taking up her case. She doesn't care about any monetary settlement, she just wants the women at the mine to be treated fairly and properly, without being harassed.
The closing scenes, providing the resolution, are rather unfulfilling. Of course, since it's based on a true story, most viewers will likely be able to surmise the end result of the story, but it still could have been less predictable. Other than the occasional, interwoven courtroom scenes in the first two-thirds, it's basically just a paint-by-numbers law story. It helps that the acting is good; Theron is amazingly strong in these unglamorous roles. And the large cast of supporting characters and extras all do well, though the management of the mining company is filled with cliches and caricatures. The costume design is especially good - something that is often overlooked in films set in more modern times.
The one lesson that Caro seems to want the viewer to take away from the story though isn't just that the men of the mining company were bad, but that ...all men are bad. Pretty much no one escapes unscathed in this. The mining men are all outrageous jerks, Josey's dad is a jerk, men in the local bar are jerks, the lawyer is only taking her case for the fame, even her son is a bratty bastard jerk. By the end, you'll feel guilty by association just from watching it (of course, whether that was the intent is a whole other issue). Combine this with too much sappiness, and a final courtroom scene that is a bit unbelievable in the context of the entire movie that preceded it, and you have a movie that is solid, but should have been better.
The Verdict: C+.
Michael Bentley 2:26 PM
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