Far North

Sam Shepard's style of bringing out a piece of real American pie is sensitively portayed in "Far North". Acting is excellent portraying a woman (Jessica Lange) who rejoins her rural family after a buckboard accident puts her Dad in the hospital vowing revenge on his horse.

For folks like myself who have lived in the area for a while, this is an interesting little episode. For those who've never been here, it does give a pretty good feel for the ambiance of the Northwoods of Wisconsin.

In fact, I may actually know Charles Durning's character from my youth. The town I'm from is south of Ashland but had more than its share of characters... one of them built an early version of a go-cart with a 12HP, two-man chain saw motor and forgot to put brakes on it. He said it was scary going down the road, waiting to run out of gas but the looks on motorist's faces when he passed them made it worth the risk.

Thank you, Mr. Shepard for such an outstanding job of displaying what is humorous about us without insulting us.

If Charles Durning cracked you up in O Brother Where Art Thou, then check him out at his best.

Though a little slow-paced and too off-beat for some, I try to watch this one at least once a year. Rare opportunity to see Jessica Lange be really funny. Not that it's a pure, comedic role, but just playing off the insanity of her family-members, she can't help but be funny.

Tess Harper, a really young Patricia Arquette, the President from A Clear and Present Danger (Donald Moffat), and the MOM of the family, will all get a few laughs, but no one more than big Charles.

Back in the late 60's I attended a college in Superior, Wisconsin. I was from Philadelphia, Pa and had never experienced the cold and long winters near the small city of Duluth, MN. I met hard drinking people there (there's nothing else to do), blond as Jessica Lange with Scandinavian or Polish accents, many of them. There were good people and bad. The men worked the port ships or the railroad yards. The blizzards were like nothing I have ever seen.

Charles Durning gets a fat man's star turn. Dunning has been thrown by his farm horse and wants the animal shot by his daughter, Jessica Lange. She protests, but agrees to shoot the animal. She's back from the Twin Cities where she works as a professional woman with one in the oven. The old man is in the hospital with wild delusions about the horse, his Alzheimer wife, and life on the farm and it's bitter cold. The drunken Uncle sidekick doesn't help either. Also, there's the younger daughter, unmarried with a teen daughter. The teen, blond as her sisters, is soon to get it on with as many young hockey players as possible.

This is Sam Sheppard's first directorial film with plenty of farce, which gets heavy handed, so the viewer never really gets a grip on the emotional lives of these crazy folks. Maybe that's it. Their lives by Lake Superior are so harsh, they cannot communicate a sensible thought. Nevertheless, Far North is a snapshot of an out of the way, beautiful place that will interest the curious.

Pregnant and unmarried city woman returns home to her family's Minnesota farm after her father has been thrown off his carriage by his dreaded-favorite horse; she reunites with her squabbling sister and niece, her dotty mother, her wily uncle (who plays the ponies), and her 99-year-old grandmother. Having recently worked on Beth Henley's "Crimes of the Heart" (with Jessica Lange and Tess Harper, who appear here as the sisters), it's almost impossible not to believe that writer Sam Shepherd wasn't inspired by Henley's eccentric, noodling style. "Far North" sounds theatrical, like a failed play--and it looks that way too, since first-time director Shepherd hasn't any idea how to stage this menagerie. There are, on the other hand, some stray funny moments between Lange, Harper, and Patricia Arquette, and some of the cinematography is striking. The other cast members haven't much to work with (all Charles Durning does is yell after an amusing early hospital-bed scene), while the narrative moseys along, occasionally trading quirks with tics. A peculiar, scrappy little picture that just doesn't work. *1/2 from ****