North Country (2005)

I couldn't find a thread on North Country (2005) so I've decided to place my comments here.

Suprisingly after a long delay, I finally went to see this movie late last night. To my amazement at this point, North Country is my favorite movie of the year and among the top ten best movies that I've seen. This movie makes Erin Brockovich (2000) look juvenile against this much more hard-hitting, serious portrayal of corporate misconduct. Charlize Theron has a wonderful script that is intimate and literally gritty and realistic in its approach. There isn't any attempt to play it mainstream and be general audience fun loving. This is a cruel, hurtful movie in places. This movie is a dark look at domestic violence, parental and family dysfunction, about the personal difficulties of its characters and the gray areas of turmoil and decision-making. This is an important movie that still has relevant resonance with today's attitudes and beliefs in respecting people. Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress performances, Best Writing easily. Except for an unnecessary final scene, this movie is perfect.

Here's my review of North Country

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oscar jubis posted:
Yet the film suffers from one major flaw: thematic overkill. (Spoilers) Poor Josey is burdened not only with a violently abusive boyfriend, insensitive and distant father, and exclusively misogynist co-workers and superiors, but also a history of rape-by-highschool-teacher that comes to light during the court proceedings. It renders not a film about women subjected to sexual harrasment but a compendium of male hatred of women. North Country is engaging and affecting but too emphatic and tendentious to suit me.

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Perhaps it's just perception or maybe it's really reality or lack of it, but considering the cycle of domestic violence abuse and how many young girls end up on the treadmill of abuse again and again from its beginnings, it's not very implausible, in fact, rather make likely that what story that unfolds in North Country is more prevalent than you might imagine. Personally, the movie contains surely no overkill of its theme but realistically depicts a personal tragedy that occurs much, much too often to many abused girls over their lifetimes. This realistic portrayal is one of the reasons I firmly believe that this movie is one of the best I've seen. It's heart-wrenching just because it is so believable, reflecting the stories of thousands of girls even in America today.

Niki Caro’s dramatic, yet graceful North Country is a heavily fictionalized version of the events that occurred during the mid-70’s when the first ever class-action sexual harassment lawsuit was filed against an iron-mining firm in Minnesota. Lois Jenson, the chief litigant of the suit, declined to issue the rights of her story to the filmmakers so they’ve created a similar person in Josey Aimes (Charlize Theron), a mother of two who early on in the film is seen leaving her violent husband to move back with her parents. Her father (Richard Jenkins) works at the mine, but when Josey proclaims her interest in joining the firm after discovering a court granted opening through a friend (Francis McDormand), he disapproves. His decision is not solely based on the working conditions, but also on Josey’s past behavioral patterns and a simple issue of pride. However, Josey’s goal to independently support her family forces her to join, and the rest of the film vividly documents the verbal, emotional and physical abuse suffered by her and her female counterparts, ultimately causing them to take a step forward.

Due to its subject matter, North Country is grim, no doubt about it. But it could’ve been much worse in the hands of someone like Lars von Trier (a few might think of his 2000 effort Dancer in the Dark while watching this). What Caro, whose previous feature was the internationally acclaimed Whale Rider (2002), has done, however, is to frame the timeline in a fashion which allows us to grasp the narrative, and thus Josey’s hard life, in segments. She’s also provided some support to her protagonist in the form of her mother (Sissy Spacek), the aforementioned friend and her husband (Sean Bean), and ultimately a local lawyer (Woody Harrelson) and even her co-workers. But through Chris Menges’ gliding overhead shots of the foreboding terrain and Gustavo Santaolalla’s acoustic tremblings, the filmmaker has tried to burden the film with a certain importance and emotional weight that her narrative isn’t strong enough to carry. North Country works best when its intentions are modest and realistic.

Grade: B
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*NORTH COUNTRY will be available on DVD on Feb 21.

I like your review, arsaib. It's an important story and there is some strong acting by Theron and others, but the screenplay is a bit simplistic in representing the initial mine situation, e.g., it should plant at least a few positive elements (or moments) among the male coworkers and their behavior prior to the trial, to make the general reversal and support of Josey's case toward the end more credible. First everybody hates her, then all of a sudden they finally stand up for her. Whale Rider may show that Caro likes to make things simple, though she moves away from the feel-good on this one.

Thank you.

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Chris Knipp posted:

I like your review, arsaib. It's an important story and there is some strong acting by Theron and others, but the screenplay is a bit simplistic in representing the initial mine situation, e.g., it should plant at least a few positive elements (or moments) among the male coworkers and their behavior prior to the trial, to make the general reversal and support of Josey's case toward the end more credible. First everybody hates her, then all of a sudden they finally stand up for her. Whale Rider may show that Caro likes to make things simple, though she moves away from the feel-good on this one.

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Sometimes the best and most realistic scenarios are simplistic and the most powerful. Prejudice and bias are oftentimes black and white, two-dimensional, very simply emotions of hate. The fact that the reversal and support of Josey's case in the end isn't that farfetched as manytimes, the guilt, regret, remorse, the outpouring requires only one person to break the damn of what already exists underneath. If one looks carefully at this trial scene at the end, the actual support is not of the majority, but a smattering of male miners along with many of the women who probably only needed cover in numbers. No I still think that this movie represents the most powerful, realistic (even though fictionalized) movie of the year and your observations I believe can be addressed to keep this movie unsullied in its superlative direction and performances and scriptwriting.

I think this movie was extremy kliché.

THe characters and situation was in typical Hollywood manner, for instance when they all started klapping their hands when her angry father makes a u-turn and defends her (of course).

The people that harassed her were way to stereotype and simple. They were only there to portray her as the saint. No need to think there!

no, i thought it was gonna be allright, but almost started laughing when i saw it.

I would agree that North Country adheres to conventions of narrative cinema typical of American studio pictures and that the film doesn't break any new ground. I found the film overly emphatic the way most mainstream "prestige" films tend to be, but that doesn't make it less effective. North Country perhaps overstresses the character's victimhood, but not her saintliness, in my opinion. Caro's attention to milieu and community, and Ms. Theron's performance make the film worth seeing.