L'affaire Josey Aimes

This is the kind of drama that breaks your heart over and over again without a moment to recover. It's NOT an easy film to watch. But that's what makes North Country so extraordinary. Charlize Theron plays Josey Aimes, a young mother who leaves her abusive husband and returns to her hometown to start a new life and support herself and her two kids. Almost immediately, we learn that this is a woman who has been judged, criticized, and ostracized and called a "whore" ever since she became pregnant in high school. Josey takes a job at the local mine because it's the best paying job she can find, and she's determined to give her kids a comfortable life. She and her female co-workers are reminded every day how unwanted and unwelcome they are at the mine. They are physically, verbally, mentally, and sexually abused on a daily basis. After being physically attacked and threatened, Josey quits and starts to fight back by suing the company for sexual harassment.

I was finally pushed over the "tears threshold" when Josey's dad stands up at the miners' union meeting and defends his daughter for the first time in her life. After that, I was sobbing on and off for the entire duration of the film. While the entire cast is perfect, I believe the Best Supporting Actress Nomination must go to Frances McDormand who injects some much-needed comic relief into this bleak-but-brave story. Movies about rape and abuse are never easy to watch, but North Country is such an important story to hear. We as women need to be reminded that women before us suffered and fought for what we take for granted today.

In the iron mines of Northern Minnesota circa 1989, a single mother of two with a shady-lady past goes to work as a miner and encounters personally degrading harassment from the mostly male crew. A compassionate and sensitive rewriting of a true incident--one that took some 10 years to resolve in the courts--but possibly overcrowded with too much melodramatic content. Supporting characters (like Frances McDormand's dump truck driver and Sissy Spacek's salt-of-the-earth mama) do not get enough quality screen-time to completely validate the time which they do have. The overripe finale is also questionable (were these filmmakers ever in a courtroom before?), though it does provide the audience with the emotional release it needs. In the lead, Charlize Theron gives a finely-wrought, gripping performance; she shows her guts, fear and bravery, but I'm not sure how convincing she is as mother to an older teenage boy (it seems a little soon for Theron). Does the film show all sides and give both the men and the women a fair shake? Probably not, but it's surprisingly not a man-haters movie, either. Told from the female protagonist's point of view, the emphasis is on her endurance against a certain group of men, taking a stand and speaking up for herself. It's inspiring, if a little corny. **1/2 from ****

This film addresses the first case of success in which a group of female workers won the firm in court in a class action of harassment and sexual discrimination. Everything happens in the mines of Minnesota but, over a real case, director Niki Caro and screenwriter Michael Seitzman decided to create a deeply melodramatic story centered on the figure of a young woman, mother of two children from different parents and with a past marred by rape and a bad marriage. She becomes the main target of the jokes, obscene gestures and provocations of the miners, who feel that women are stealing jobs from men. The story is very emotional but works well anyway. An interesting point is that, even when things are tense, the two sides are not defined by their sex, that is, even in those moments there are women who are not in favor of complaining, just as there are men who don't approve of the rude and coarse attitudes of their fellows. This allows the public to understand that the issue is not men vs. women, goes far beyond mere sexism.

Charlize Theron is a good actress but seems visually too young for the character sometimes. Anyway, she managed to shine. Richard Jenkins has been OK but acts in a predictable way. Frances McDormand did very well, especially in the final half of the movie, where she really shows talent. Jeremy Renner manages to be truly despicable as the villain. Technically regular, it's a good movie and it deserves to be watched.

I hate to give North Country a relatively low vote because this is such an important issue, and I appreciate the good intentions of director Niki Caro, and the A-list actors who no doubt took a big pay cut when agreeing to take a role.

On the other hand, I feel disappointed, a little angry, as well as insulted as a woman that this hugely important story was made into a melodrama that flattens out what really happened, and somehow manages to diminish the political nature of sexual harassment, even while seeming to highlight it.

At least 90 percent of the problem had to do with Michael Seitzman's script.

In the interview with Seitzman on the DVD, he makes clear that he didn't think the sexual harassment story was the real story. The real story, he said, was the traumatic experience Josie had in high school, and her relationship with her son.

Therefore he should have written a script for Lifetime focusing on what he felt was the "real story". He should not have used one of the most important cases for sexual harassment in legal history as the vehicle for telling this other story.

The producers should have demanded a script that more closely resembled Susannah Grant's Erin Brockovich. The sequence of victimization after victimization depicted in North Country didn't let us get to know Josie's character in any depth. We saw her slammed against the wall again and again, from beginning to end. We see that she stands up against the oppression, but we aren't taken into her sensibility, her choices, her process, her blind spots, character change, etc, etc, like in EB. Likewise, the lack of complexity in the male "macho" characters also flattens the story, and takes away from the real difficulties in challenging sexism and sexual harassment. In real life, character complexity of those who oppress or who defend oppressors is part of what makes the problem of sexual harassment difficult to fight.

I read an interview with Niki Caro, and though I think she's a very talented director, I got the sense that she didn't really get the politics or history behind sexual harassment. It seems things aren't as bad in New Zealand as they are here in the U.S. This is a foreign culture to her, and Northern Minnesota is certainly a foreign culture. I wish she would have spent more time fully understanding the issues and cultural dynamics (including the accent and mannerisms of the area, etc, which were sprinkled into the movie, but not rigorously replicated) before undertaking the project. If she had gone the extra mile to immerse herself in the issue and the region, perhaps she would have demanded a total rewrite of the script.

Josey Aimes (Charlize Theron) leaves her abusive husband and returns to her hometown in Northern Minnesota. After a prompt from her old friend Glory (Frances McDormand), Josey now a single mother with two children to support, seeks employment at the town iron mine plant. Predominantly employing men, Josey is expecting the work to be hard and gruelling, what she wasn't expecting tho is the mental and sexual harassment that the women and herself are expected to tolerate. Finally having enough, she starts to speak out about her treatment, but she finds that there are few allies both at work and at home. Her career, her life and her family are all sure to be affected as things reach breaking point.

North Country is inspired by the 2002 book Class Action: The Story of Lois Jenson, which details the landmark case of Jenson V Eveleth Taconite Company that changed the sexual harassment law.

There is always a danger in film land that serious, based on facts topics get too much of a Hollywood sheen. So shall it be with Niki Caro's (Whale Rider) interpretation of this most important part of American law. The impact is there, very much so, but in the need to keep the audience on board, one feels they are being force fed drama when really none was needed. Having a beauty like Charlize Theron playing your lead hardly helps cast off the glossy feel of the production. "Rightly" nominated for Best Actress (she has gusto in abundance), Theron is however miscast as regards the nature of the piece, her aura and star bank-ability his hard to ignore during the more dramatic moments. As the New York Times review noted on its release, "it's a star vehicle with heart," and it's impossible to argue with that astute summary.

Still there is much to enjoy here. In amongst the annoying contrivances put our way to further the emotional aspects, there beats a serious and dramatic heart. Coupled with a more than competently handled court case finale, and aided by McDormand's highly effective performance, North Country makes its valid point in spite of its obvious problems. Though the film didn't make back its budget of $30 million, it got people talking about the topic at its core. Putting the revolting issue of sexual harassment back in the public conscious can never be a bad thing, so with that, North Country achieved its aims. If it's as impacting as its cousins, Norma Rae, Silkwood and Erin Brockovich is debatable, but it is potent and it is acted with aplomb from its principals. It's just regrettable that one can't quite shake off knowing it's all a bit too glossy for its own good. 7/10