North Country

I just spent a little time watching this movie, North Country. Here's a link to the info about the film on IMDB. And here are some reviews from Metacritic. (On a side note, it seems like there are a million people writing about movies out there, and there are enough opinions to make the whole purpose of movie reviews - guidance in a sea of DVD's - seem unimportant or impossible. You get that sense from this website - there is such a thing as too much help.)

Anyway, after reading some of the reviews, I think I'm better able to articulate what I liked about the movie, and what I didn't like. First, a brief synopsis: Charlize Theron plays the main character, and the movie starts out with Theron fleeing an abusive husband with her teenage son and younger daughter. She moves in with her parents in northern Minnesota. At this point, the movie is flashing back and forth with some kind of courtroom scene that doesn't make a lot of sense yet. Theron bumps into an old friend, and the friend gives her the idea to work at the local mine. Theron's dad works there already, and he is against the idea, but she does it anyway. Of course, none of the men want her to work there, and the women seem to mostly keep their heads down because they are afraid. There are lots of abrasive scences of sexual harassment - bad jokes, suggestive things spray-painted on trucks and walls, a rubber penis put in one woman's lunch, another woman finding semen on her shirt in her locker, swear words written in feces on the locker room walls - and the predictable thing happens. Theron brings it to the attention of lots of people, and the people invariably tell her that she should just put up with it and move on. She keeps trying to fix it and talking about it, and the recriminations get worse, until she is choked and threatened by her immediate supervisor.

She quits, and it moves into courtroom mode. She sues the company, and she tries to get some other women to join her to make it a class action suit against the company that employs her. She can't get anyone else to join her because everyone is afraid of what will happen if they join. The case goes on, and the other lawyer successfully trashes Theron almost to victory. But then Theron's lawyer - Woody Harrelson - verbally beats a witness into corroborating part of Theron's story, about being raped in high school by a teacher. This inspires a whole bunch of other mine workers to stand up and join the suit, making it a class action.

I tend to watch movies with my emotions. In other words, I pay attention to how movies make me feel. When I read, I usually think more about plot and character and the multitude of factors that affect my reception of a text. But with movies, I'm less able to dissect and analyze the things that produce the reaction I have. I enjoyed this movie because it packed a strong emotional wallop; the repeated scenes of abuse were strong and effective. I watched this movie, and I started to feel - if only a little - what it might feel like to be in this situation. A sad presumption, I know, but that seems to be the purpose here. The point is to sympathize with Theron.

I would say that there are two things that really make this kind of movie work: a clear presentation of injustice, and the opportunity to see that injustice rectified. It helps to have a main character that is likeable in some way. Theron fits that bill quite nicely (see the publicity picture from an earlier movie). But we don't have to like the character to understand the injustice, and perhaps sympathize with the character being mistreated. That makes things complicated - because everyone likes to see a bad guy/girl get what he/she deserves - but there are bad guys and not-so-bad-guys, and there are characters who are punished in ways that are out of proportion to their evil deeds. Take Fargo, for example. On another side-note, I think that I tend to like movies that mess with these lines a little. I just watched Rashomon, an old Akira Kurosawa movie, and that's a movie that does exactly that. Or one of my favorite Godard movies, Band of Outsiders.

This movie, North Country, tells a good story, and manages to punch you (or at least me) in the guts a few times. It has a predictable happy ending, but it feels good when the big mean company gets its just desserts. And it tries to be fair - equal helpings of jerk men and jerk women (like the lawyer for the other side). I think it's worth seeing, though it won't change your life unless you've got something in common with its characters.