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Movie Review: Northfork

This film is (a) lyrical, (b) pretentious, (c) silly, (d) all of the above. It's your choice.

by Janey | 2003.07.22

One of the coolest things about movies is that they are different experiences for everyone. This is true of books, too, of course, but the difference is that everyone you know isn’t rushing out to buy and read the same book all at one, unless you’re a Harry Potter fan, while film watching pretty much goes in two waves – when the film is released in theatres and then again when it’s released on video.

So during the run of a movie, you can be more or less assured that most everyone who is going to see it will see it during a limited time span and then you can actually talk about it, if there’s something to talk about. And one thing that will start a conversation going like nothing else is a film about which everyone has a different opinion.

Northfork is a film about which few will agree. But, I think, in most cases, those who see it will feel strongly about it. I, for example, loved it. A good friend hated it. And even while I was watching it, I could anticipate the reactions of others, not always good. But that makes it even more important to see. Who cares about the thought behind a film that everyone likes? Wasn’t it Mark Twain (or was it Abraham Lincoln?) who said that if everyone likes you, you must be a hypocrite? Northfork is no hypocrite. It is unabashedly itself and that alone is a recommendation.

The Polish brothers have made two previous films, Twin Falls, Idaho, and Jackpot, both of which met with mixed responses. Northfork is a more mature, more thoughtful film than either of these, but it clearly came from the same minds. Northfork tells two stories, not necessarily related. The first story is that of the eponymous town soon to disappear under water diverted by a recently completed dam, and of the efforts to evacuate any householders who remain in the path of the flood. The second story is that of Irwin, a six or seven year old orphan, who is returned to the orphanage by his adoptive parents as defective. Well, not defective, exactly, but just very, very ill. In fact, Irwin is dying. And the story of Irwin takes us into and through his experience and we find out that dying might not be as bad as we’ve all made it out to be.

Through these two stories, the film explores ideas about dying and loss and abandonment, and how the three are interrelated but very, very different. We look through the filmmakers’ lens at the attachments that we make, the ones that we break and the ones that we decide we can’t let go. And throughout the film, there is gentle reminder after gentle reminder that it is the holding on that is painful, not the letting go.

There are many who find the Polish brothers’ work to be unbelievably irritating because, they say, it is so pretentious. I come at it from a different angle. I think that if you see their work, and particularly this film, as intentionally self conscious, as poking light fun at itself even as it delivers a rather serious tale, you may find your own views of death and loss and filmmaking lightening just a bit. Northfork is peopled with oddities, eccentrics and some fantastic creatures, not all of whom are explained. No character is without his or her (or its?) own quirks but considering that there really are only a dozen or so people in the entire film, the quirks never overlap. Those eccentricities are certainly going to irritate those who find this film irritating, but I found them homey and comfortable. There’s the diner with no menu, where you have to guess what’s available today and, until you do, no meal. What’s that doing in the middle of everything else? I don’t know, but it certainly adds to the dreamlike and whimsical nature of the film as a whole. There’s the completely unexplained dog on stilts. I actually think that the dog is part of a larger group of mythical creatures, but no one ever introduces him or claims him, so we’re left to our own interpretation. God is in the film, portrayed very nicely, I thought, as a blind young man in a cowboy hat, scribbling hieroglyphics to the inspiration provided by a music box.

The performances in this film are very dry, emphasized by the occasional joke that is completely out of place and delivered without the slightest bit of humor. James Woods and Mark Polish are a father-son team intent on evacuating holdouts while trying to resolve the question of whether to disinter their wife/mother from her place in Northfork’s cemetery before the waters rise and she becomes the “catch of the day,” and Nick Nolte plays the minister left with one last orphan in his orphanage. Nolte is always somewhat poker faced, and in this role he is no different. So much more affecting, then, the moments in which he protects the little boy with all his strength from unreliable strangers and would-be parents.

There’s a vastness to this little film that warms my heart. There is tenderness and understanding that get pushed aside in bigger pictures, and that I appreciate having a taste of now and then. And there’s a little boy with a speech impediment and sticky outy ears who is a perfect angel. And if that’s pretentious, give me pretentious any day.

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