Northfork

This film played for a criminally short time in Buffalo and of course was gone by the time I wanted to see it. I'm sure the beautifully shot, rugged western landscapes would have been great on a big screen, but unfortunately I had to settle for the video version on my 13" TV. With that said, "Northfork" is that rare and elusive bird of movies: a commercial film that is worthy of the viewer's hour and a half and doesn't manage to be insulting. Despite the career sins of Nick Nolte and Darryl Hannah in the past, don't be turned off by their presence here. They are perfect in their respective roles, Nolte as world-worn mystic and Hannah as enigmatic ghost/angel/vision. Without rehashing a plot summary (which, I might add, is somewhat inaccurate on this site), let me say that "Northfork" is a kind of delirium, alternating between the dreamlife of a dying boy and the surreal landscape of a mostly empty town, peopled only by a handful of eccentric stragglers. The central plot, as it were, revolves around a group of state-sanctioned volunteers given the task of clearing out these final hangers-on before the town is flooded. The six deputized agents, clad in black and issued identical black sedans, speak in detached, banal fragments, going about their task with an odd fatalism. Although the dialogue and cold, alien demeanor owes heavily to David Lynch, it is sure to please fans of the eclectic and bizarre like myself. The other plot strand, that of the dying boy's fever visions, is a bit heavy-handed in places, with an overkill of its clumsy angel motif, but it manages enough ambiguity and originality to avoid queasiness.

Above all else, this film has the feel of a strange dream, mired in drab shades and an undercurrent of ominous mystery. The camera work is brilliant and, despite awkward moments, the film has the feeling of a deep, cold water reservoir running beneath a landscape familiar and unreal at once.

Never having seen a Polish brothers movie, I approached this with no expectations.

Somewhere in Montana in 1952 (though everything suggests an earlier date and the cars, as usual, are too perfect looking), a plain is to be flooded by a dam and a team of men in black suits is sent out to coax the few recalcitrant remaining inhabitants to vacate the properties. Each pair of evacuators is supposed to be awarded one and a half acres of prime lakefront property if they can prove that 65 locations assigned to them have been vacated. One team is James Woods (as Walter O'Brian) and his son Willis (Mark Polish). They're also supposed to remove Wood's character's wife's coffin because graves are supposed to be dug up to prevent the coffins' floating up in the flooded land. Needless to say, this makes little literal sense: the references here are to the American frontier mentality, to imperialism, land grabbing, materialism, and impiety, which the Polish brothers are impressionistically dealing with throughout this strange and highly allegorical film.

Meanwhile Nick Nolte is Father Harlan, a deranged priest running a decrepit orphanage to which a fleeing couple return a small boy they adopted earlier (Duel Farnes, who is fine) because, they say, he was `defective,' being sick all along, and is now too sick to travel.

Much of what follows revolves around the boy and may constitute his dying delirium or fantasy that he is an angel. He meets Daryl Hannah (Flower Hercules) in a graveyard in a wig and Elizabethan costume and goes back with her to see her pals, Cup of Tea (Robin Sachs, also in Elizabethan drag), Happy (Anthony Edwards, with a bizarre complex of adjustable spectacles on), and Cod (Ben Foster, a wordless young man in a bejeweled cowboy hat), and begs them to take him away from this place with them – 1,000 miles away, he insists. They bargain over the distance: this may constitute the denial and bargaining of the dying person.

At its center the film cuts back and forth with lugubrious regularity between this scene, in which the boy tries to claim he has scars from where he used to have wigs and a halo (Cup of Tea is unconvinced, Hannah is weepily sympathetic, Happy is scientifically neutral, and Cod is mute) – and scenes focused either exclusively on the band of evacuators or, as the film progresses, on them in encounters, variously hostile, fearful, or unfriendly, between them and the stubborn or oblivious holdouts on the land. One team is shot at, their car nearly demolished. Woods and son deal with a man with two wives who's built an ark. They fail to convince all three to leave, and, having evidence of only 64 evacuations, receive no land document.

Nick Nolte all the while is seen trying to save the boy, whom at one point he offers to Kyle McLaughlin and wife (Mr. and Mrs. Hope: this begins to sound like Pilgrim's Progress), but they aren't allowed to view the boy up close, only through a window, so they leave empty-handed (Hope without Faith thus disappointed). Nolte, Father Harlan, also goes to a pharmacist and gets antibiotics which he injects in the boy; he bathes him, reads to him, etc., but all efforts fail and the boy dies, apparently. Meanwhile scenes of the boy with Daryl Hannah et al. continue. In the end they all fly away in a big plane just like the little one in the boy's lap. Cod is his co-pilot.

Much is made of a set of putative `angel's wings,' big snowy white bird's wings which inexplicably are carried around in a large suitcase and shown both to the man with two wives and to Hannah and company.

Though no doubt enormously puzzling and open to many interpretations, it must be said that compared to something like Alejandro Joderovsky's El Topo, which this inexplicably reminded me of, Northfork makes much coherent narrative sense. Somehow the apocalyptic mood and the presence of dubious priests, spectral landscapes, and semi-mythological characters also bring Cormac McCarthy to mind, but the movie lacks McCarthy's vivid regional character and colloquial down home talk.

What it all means is more than I can venture to say in any more detail here. The tedium of the pacing might be more unfortunate if it were not to some extent relieved by an omnipresent sense of humor and also by a loyal and able cast and a stunning cinematography that combines colorless dimness with exquisite clarity in ways that heighten the pervasive sense of the surreal.

There is no doubt at all that the Polish brothers are originals. If hip young people and art film cultists like this film as much as Roger Ebert (who inexplicably believes the loquacious and visually acute Happy to be both blind and mute), Northfork will be on some level a stunning success. To many it is likely to remain arid and incomprehensible . . .and not sexy and scary like David Lynch. But the vision is unique -- and not as incomprehensible as it may seem.

Northfork is not an inscrutable mess. Whether you wish to view the more fanciful scenes as literal or the product of a dying boy's imagination, one strong theme connects all the stories. Change happens. Each sub-story revolves around a profound change. The little boy is dying. The town is being evacuated. The movie illustrates how we get dragged along by changes we are powerless to stop. We should ideally make the best of them and accept whatever heartache they cause. Some look forward towards a new freedom (the little boy) and some obstinately refuse to accept them (the ark family). And Walter has to learn the lesson that there are some changes we think are over and done with that must be relived (reburying his wife). Just because we think we've buried a chapter in life under the ground doesn't make it so. This is shown so clearly by the conversations between Walter and his son Willis. I say that if you really want to know what the movie is about watch the scene that begins in the outhouse. And pay special attention to the Willis's speech about caring for his car. Its a beautiful movie that gains meaning for me every time I watch it.

The Polish brothers are unique film artists, and they've really pushed the envelope here. A fantasy that has points in common with "Wings of Desire," "Northfork" tells the story of a '50s era small town in the middle of nowhere that is two days shy of being inundated and submerged thanks to the U.S. government's desire to make a reservoir on the place where the town stands. It's a wry parable about loss and remembrance, featuring angels, dreams, premonitions, and the most hilarious government reclamation functionaries since "Repo Man." The performances are all outstanding, especially Nolte and Woods. I've noticed in reading down some of the comments that there are people who were offended simply by the fact that the Polish twins use elliptical storytelling tactics, and I want to say, that's one of the things that makes this film so great: its willingness to embrace the mysterious as an aspect of everyday life. David Mullen's cinematography is stunning. Highly recommended; if you've suffered a meaningful personal loss, such as the death of a parent, I would even call this film necessary viewing. - Ray

this is a very special movie, driven by imagery and character rather than by linear action or even plot. Things progress along two lines which eventually converge, that of the dying child cared for by the Father, and the evacuation of the valley. The child, delirious, is pulled back and forth between two realms, while the Father waits upon his dying. Nick Nolte plays this part with enormous sensitivity and restraint. The evacuation teams seem to suggest a parallel to the Biblical flood, and eventually the two lines of action merge into a dream state, as if the flood is waiting for the child, as well. James Woods gives a deceptively simple, finely nuanced performance, providing emotional depth and focus to the story line. The question seems to be, is the flood the waters of life, or the waters of death? Or is it both at the same time? The writers seem to feel that in the final analysis, there is no difference between the two. Rather than leaving one disheartened, this film uplifts.