Northfork Movie
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Storyline
TAGLINES PLOT SUMMARY
In a near-empty Northfork orphanage, Father Harlan gently tends to Irwin, a eight-year-old who lies between a dreamstate and death. As orphanage caretaker Harlan reads aloud about Northfork's years-ago forced evacuation to make way for a hydro-electric dam, Irwin's imagination takes flight. While a team of six men evacuate the last remaining citizens of the town, Irwin, too, invents a cast of characters to prepare himself for his own evacuation.
| James Woods | Walter O'Brien |
| Nick Nolte | Father Harlan |
| Claire Forlani | Mrs. Hadfield |
| Daryl Hannah | Flower Hercules |
| Anthony Edwards | Happy |
| Douglas Sebern | Mayor |
| Duel Farnes | Irwin |
| Graham Beckel | Marvin |
| Josh Barker | Matt |
| Peter Coyote | Eddie |
| Jon Gries | Arnold |
| Rick Overton | Rudolph |
| Robin Sachs | Cup of Tea |
| Ben Foster | Cod |
| Michael Polish |
6.30 out of 10 (1911 votes)
Visitor Reviews
No pillow required
posted on 20 Aug 2009I can't believe how off-base Mr. Jersey is. Just saw this movie yesterday and was awestruck. Yes, it was no big action flick... but it was definitely no where near a snooze. The acting by Nolte and Woods not to mention newcomer Duel Farnes was subtle and deep and beautiful. The real although definitely strange world of the last remaining townsfolk who have to move and the men who are sent to relocate them was seamlessly interwoven with the "other world" whose surroundings held angels and strange stilt-walking wooden horse heads and dying children and it was all very, very beautiful. I can see where Mr. Hoffman found a Gillian resemblance but a very slight resemblance is all there was. Where Gillian is dark and despairing, this film is intensely hopeful. There is a healing and a light and an endurance to these people's lives. We sat in a full theater yesterday and when the movie ended and the credits started, I swear no one moved. Please give this movie a chance. Yes, a big summer blockbluster this movie is not... but is that really such a bad thing?
Pretentious cinematic fodder
posted on 09 Jul 2009"`Northfork' is far more about mood, imagery and tone than it is about plot and character development." Ummm, yes and unfortunately plot and character development are the 2 most essential provisions for a film to portray. This flick was beautiful, but I never became interested in the people, the town or the underlying tones of death and salvation that the directors tried sooooo hard to portray. I just didn't care. I was looking at the clock more than anything else.. Too bad, because it could have been a great film IF the right amount of character empathy could have been created for the audience. Instead we get a heaping pile of pretentious cinematic fodder.
Beautifully surreal.
posted on 05 Jun 2009I enjoyed this film's surreal nature and mysteriousness of the characters. The cinematography is beautiful, and the film is well-cast. Although I usually do not like Nick Nolte and the roles he plays, he showed great depth in this film.Viewers who are unaccustomed to abstract film-making will find the plot disturbingly confusing, but I thought the transcendent themes overode the ambiguuities. If you absolutely HAVE to "understand" the film, just listen to the director's comments on the DVD. Doing this, however, diminishes the abstract beauty of the film--the way an art expert can ruin the experience of a fascinating painting in a museum.By an odd coincidence, I had toured the locale for this film only a few months before purchasing it, and I thought the director captured the awesome yet austere nature of western Montana well.The film is worth seeing just for the scenery and cinematography alone, and it offers many interesting topics for sociological discussions. I have already recommended it to number of my friends who appreciate esoteric films.
Northfork, Montana (1776-1955)
posted on 02 May 2009A dreamy, stunningly atmospheric film takes place in a small town of Northfork, Montana in 1955. The government officials arrive to evacuate the town about to be inundated by a new hydroelctrical dam. There are the other visitors in the town, the angels from another time but they only seen by a dying boy Irvin. A local priest (Nick Nolte in a quiet heartbreaking performance) takes care of the boy. Irvin pleads with the angels to leave the place with them...There is some unearthly quality in the film, some dignified mourning and sublime sadness when you suddenly realize the inevitable finality of everything - humans and their relationships, cities, countries, civilizations, the whole world as we know it. Death and birth have something in common - we go through them in the ultimate loneliness. I cannot recall the film that affected me in the same way and as deeply as "Northfork" did, the film so beautiful and so tender, so quiet and so powerful, so heartbreaking and so moving. Even now, after several weeks since I saw it, tears come to my eyes when I only think of it.After I saw it, I had to talk to somebody about it. I sent a PM to one of my friends and I asked, "Please tell me what I just saw?" And my friend replied with the words, "You just saw one of the greatest films of modern times. One of these days others will see the light."
Beautiful, wonderful, and very sad...
posted on 24 Apr 2009I was surprised to find such a large number of bad or negative-tasting reviews about Northfork. Northfork was very beautiful: the images seemed partially surreal but natural and real at the same time. The colors, editing, acting and dialog, and the story itself produced the same feeling. It was very successful in mixing dream with film-reality, the story of Northfork with Irwin's fantasies and dreams. The combination was very elegant and gentle, and as dreams are usually presented in other movies (too obvious and uninspired). In my opinion, this degree of creativity already deserves a very good rating.Northfork is also outstanding because it is very brave to treat death more emotionally than I have ever seen before captured on film. Although you see a lot of people dying in movies usually, the real emotional nature of death is constantly ignored. Death is usually treated in videogame- or entertainment-manner, without any emotions or value, and even when it's treated seriously, you will only see somebody acting sad, maybe crying, but the viewer is kept outside.Northfork on the other side invites you to be inside of the story, to accompany a death of a child, and the death of a whole town. This is very bitter, sad and depressing and probably not what most people would want to see. And although a little bit of humor is offered here and there, it still keeps the same bitter taste. What is left is the strange (morbid) beauty of the scenery, the calmness and loneliness of a deserted city and a deserted child. Northfork treats death with all its sadness and unexplainable beauty very realistically in my opinion, as it felt very similar when I lost close relatives before. It may be a coincidence or really a purposeful documentation of the emotional state when being confronted with death, but Northfork deserves 10/10 points for being able to transport this complex mixture of emotions, impressions, beauty and sadness--at least to me.Being VERY impressed and gave it 10/10 points.
Addendum: One in a million
posted on 03 Mar 2009After some further thought about this film, I find it's far too easy to dismiss this as the Boy's dream. I have actually received some spiritual strength from Northfork.......Angels do exist....we definitely are entertained by Angels....most of the time we aren't even aware of it..... At a point of spiritual and emotional turbidity in my life, I personally really needed this film. Yes, as I wrote before, it speaks to so many......can't wait to get to Heaven..."Being so sick of all of the FX and Formula stuff, I found this film to be genuine Cinema. All I can say is it touched me in so many ways, that I still am sorting it all out. North Fork is a wonderful film. One that brings the viewer's mind out of the gutter and into the heart. The spiritual aspect is so very intriguing to me. Pay attention, as you'll need to use the brain and heart God gave you to follow the story. I think it's possibly a bit over the heads of some, but I feel those are the individuals it speaks to most importantly. I want to view it several more times, just so I can take it all in!The Industry needs to study this film to realize we do exist.My thanks to all involved in the making of this film."
Monochromatic monotonous muddle
posted on 10 Jan 2009Having seen the previews for Northfork at one of our local Indie-plexes we had a decidedly different impression of what it would be like from what it really is. A newspaper review furthered our expectations so we popped for a babysitter and went. Wow, what a disappointment!Northfork is a dark, sad, and ultimately pointless movie with some cutesy dialog to occasionally grab ahold of in the darkness.I emailed the local reviewer with the suggestion that his article seemed carefully crafted to describe the film in the most positive possible terms, much like a defense lawyer might embellish a description of his otherwise low-life client. I asked him why he didn't just write that the damned movie was about a dying orphan cared for by Nick Nolte looking like he did in his police mug shot or "Affliction" (which was also a ticketable offense), interspersed with absurdist scenes of three pairs of locally-recruited mercenary evacuation enforcers trying to evict three silly 2D weirdoes? A 50's suburban tract house with two Chevy's parked in the driveway in an otherwise bleak prairie town? An ark with no animals? An old guy shooting at the enforcers from his porch? Goofy yes, maybe even darkly whimsical, but what about a real PLOT? (I apologize for giving away an hour of the storyline but when lots of footage can be reduced to a few sentences and nothing is left out, well, I consider that a public service.)The images at times are stark and lovely in their own way, e.g., Nolte monotoning a sermon in a church where the wall behind him is gone revealing an expanse of open prairie, but just as SFX and CGI can't make an engaging worthwhile film, neither can a movie consisting of strung-together weirdness.
A sickly kind of surrealism
posted on 29 Dec 2008Have I just been unlucky in the films I've chosen to see, or does 'magic realism' always mean 'silly, stylised stuff involving angels'? Admittedly, the 'angels' in 'Northfork' are meant to be the products of a sick child's fevered imagination, so the absurdity of their characters and their dialogue is excusable; but what's the excuse for the rest of the surreal yet sickly script?Connoisseurs of camp and David Lynch devotees may love this movie, as may true believers who like their religious passion to look pretty. 'Northfork' is visually striking, and has some very memorable, nicely composed images in it. Several very talented actors heroically deliver deeply ludicrous lines with straight faces. But I found 'Northfork' sentimental rather than moving, and too baroque and bizarre to be emotionally engaging.
Hating on this movie
posted on 21 Dec 2008This is the worst movie I have ever seen. It makes no sense at all. There is literally no plot. There is no redeeming quality to this movie. There is nothing enjoyable at all. Painfully slow. If this movie were any slower, I'd be dead before it ended. There is no other 1:45 of my life I'd rather have back than the time I spent watching this piece of crap. I would rather watch The Horse Wisperer followed by The Englishman That Went Up a Hill and Came Down a Mountain continuously for a week than watch this movie once. I hear there's a great invention called COLOR television, but you'd never know it by watching this movie. I would say that the artsy, pinko commie crowd would like this movie, but I don't think anyone in the world could possible endorse this garbage.
The Last Dais Of Olwen
posted on 15 Dec 2008Way back in 1949 Emlyn Williams wrote and directed a 'little' film called 'The Last Days Of Dolwyn'. The Dolywn was a welsh village about to be flooded to provide a reservoir for Lancashire and the residents were to be moved to Liverpool, a town within that same county. The leading actor was Richard Burton, making his film debut opposite Edith Evans, and long before he established himself in the theatre or movies. It's not for me to speculate on whether or not the Polish brothers ever saw Dolwyn or even knew about it, but they do say that there is nothing new under the sun (or water for that matter), certainly not plot-wise. For Northfork it seems the freres Polish have exhumed Dylan Thomas, laid about four keys of Mescalin on him and asked him to rework Dolwyn and relocate it to Montana. The result is ... well, WEIRD is good. For good measure they remembered a William Wellman entry from around 1950, top-billing Bob Mitchum. 'Track Of The Cat' was notable for being shot in Black and White - on color stock. With the sole exception of a yellow scarf the whole thing was muted and gray was the predominant shade. Nothing wrong with this, of course; no one writes in a vacuum and if not everyone is as self-deluding as Gilbert Adair, who calls plagiarism 'homage', there is still a lot of 'borrowing' going on out there. On balance the brothers have come up with some good moments but it does remain something of a curate's egg.
6/10
Incomprehensible, even by art-house standards
posted on 14 Oct 2008Most of the films I really like are art-house fare and seldom appear on the box-office top-ten lists. That said, I found "Northfork" utterly incomprehensible. I have no idea what it was even about. Writing in the New York Times about a different film, Stephen Holden once observed that some people seem to think they can throw just anything up on the screen and have it work as a fairy tale. I thought of that review several times while watching "Northfork".On a scale of one to ten, I gave it a two.
A baffling and pretentious but ultimately enchanting movie
posted on 06 Oct 2008Sometimes, I fall in love with movies as a result of the films they remind me of and not because of any inherent brilliance in the movie at hand. Take Northfork for instance, which calls to mind (for me) Wings of Desire, the Straight Story, moments of Bunuel, and Godardian dialogue. In other words, the film reminds me of moments (or entire films) that have great meaning for me. The imagery is certainly derived from Dali and Bunuel and the characters have a Lynchian appeal. The angels are straight Wenders, sort of, and "What you talking about Willis?" reminds me the advice in Pierrot to "Put a tiger in your tank," though referring to Diff'rent Strokes seems an ironic (and none to subtle jab) in the audience's side and not the satiric barb Godard meant by quoting an Exxon commercial.The story involves G-men sent straight from American International Pictures lot of the 1940s to a Montana wasteland to evacuate stragglers in the soon-to-be submerged town of Northfork. It's intercut with the possible fever-dreams of a terminally ill child that play host to a series of adventures involving despondent angels. The plot is elliptical and symbolic and full of esoteric turns of phrase. It's pretentious and reminds me of a movie I wrote during my freshman year of college influenced, as I was, by European existentialism and Beckett. It's not a terrible thing and is, in fact, refreshing in a way, but it is an obvious attempt at artistry that wears its influences like badges. With some more time and maturity, the Polish brothers, who wrote and directed this film, will create something of startling originality I am sure. Anyway, but back to my first point: I loved this film the first time I watched it, as it is gorgeous to look at (nice staging and wonderful cinematography), and I was reminded of some of my favorite movies. However, the second time around, I found it annoying. Here was this gorgeous looking movie fraught with some real emotion (the abandoned, dying child) and brimming with sublime performances (neither Nolte nor Woods have had parts this great in years), and the Polish brothers had to go and mar it all with their irony and quirkiness. It reminded me, in a way, of a Lynch film infused with the whimsy and winking of a Wes Anderson film. It left a bad taste in my mouth, in other words. Does this review sound overly negative? It shouldn't; there is a lot to admire about this film and a lot to despise. It's not a masterpiece but it shows some talent and points to the fact that these Polish boys might make something of themselves one day. It is pretentious and confusing (in the worst way possibly--its confounding nature apparently lacks a point), but it is immensely enchanting. The lyrical beauty of the cinematography and the languid style of storytelling lull you into a hypnotized state from which you don't arise until the film's end. That's quite an accomplishment. Now, if only the Polishes could move beyond sophomoric attempts at humor (really, the Diff'rent Strokes reference is just silly and not particularly witty).
Magical Dream
posted on 04 Sep 2008this film haunted me so well that I had to watch it twice in a day.The cast and performances are great specially James Woods and Nick Nolte's which I shall always remember them for this film. The cinematography with its dreamlike grey colour is beautiful.every element matches so perfectly and creates the atmosphere to tell the story of a disappearing town and the realm of after life in a very Innocent poetic way rather then having a depressing approach which can easily be done. The costume and set design is very surreal which would satisfy the fans of surreal arts.If you have an imagination and are able to have creative dreams ,you will love this film and could become one of your memorable dreams. This film also have a neat sense of humour which is admirable.
What the hell *was* that?
posted on 26 Jul 2008This is an amazingly beautiful film. The directors' feel for light and place are remarkable, and every shot is perfectly crafted.Unfortunately, the plot and the dialogue are incredibly pretentious, opaque, and "whimsical". As near as I can figger out, it's about life, death, angels, and belonging. Lots of inside jokes, so true film fanatics will (possibly) enjoy getting all the references to other films. The script might have been written by any pot-smoking fourteen-year-old who was having trouble working through some religious issues.On the whole, it's a tragic waste of extremely talented cinematography. Don't watch it unless you truly enjoy being bored by beautiful pictures.
Imagery Immersion
posted on 24 Jul 2008Imagery controls this film. The characters, although interesting, ultimately take a back seat. The first scene I remember is a framed black and white shot of the ocean, that then opens to full screen and color. The bubbling of the water gives way to a small coffin that breaks the surface. The theme of the movie here, being that death can be accepted and brought into the realm of the living.Water as an ultimate consciousness, as a tool of God, is used to here to force people to get their "houses" in order (Judgment Day). The dead have to be accounted for and lifted to a better place. Whatever one has left unresolved or unsettled, will be washed away. There's no clinging on to the past, to a buried memory of what was.This movie has been compared to O, Brother Where Art Thou, and the threat of water and its use as a cleansing force is similar to that film. What's different in this movie is that the coming of the water is knowable and so, again, the emphasis is on what needs to be done with the here and now.I agree that the some of the scenes are reminiscent of a David Lynch work. Take, for example, the dinner segment with the deep-voiced and androgynous waitress. One gets the same surreal feel from the setting and odd character as one does with the backwards talker in the scene from Fire Starter. The difference is that Lynch attacks us with the image to express the psychological processes of a troubled character, whereas this film seems to use surreal elements to create a moral message. The men in black suits can't have anything they want-they must be patient and accept what is available.
Yin without Yang = nothing...and visa-
posted on 26 Jun 2008An cheap way to create interest in a film is to take a story, chop it up into pieces, and dole them out randomly to build audience curiosity. The result is an audience which is intrigued, not by the story but, by the sham which begs the question: What is this flick about? And so begins "Northfork", a fable about the dialectic of progress and the inevitability of death. In their quest to be different in their own weird way, the Polish brothers went too far in the direction of the bleak, the starkly austere, and the minimalistic in "Northfork". The stoicism of their previous hit indie "Twin Falls Idaho" only worked because it was offset by a human story which provided the substance for empathetic entertainment. In "Northfork" the human story is surreal, beyond believability, and unsatisfying with actors looking more like actors than characters. Without a satisfying human story, "Northfork" is just so much weirdness which must be relegated to the art house and an existence as a peculiarity among films. Only for artie lovers and those into films which are different for the sake of being different. (B-)
Glad I'm not the only one who didn't get it
posted on 23 May 2008I won't provide a synopsis of the film because, well, in my opinion it was just too much of a mess to unravel into any sort of sensible summary.I have to agree with most of the comments I read - the visual imagery was hauntingly beautiful. Unfortunately, that is the only positive observation I can muster. Oh, and the actors gave acceptable performances. So, OK, two positive notes. But what incomprehensible drivel! Perhaps the writers were trying to create a story that would cause a viewer to think, but I found myself scratching my head for three distinctly different reasons; 1. And the point was...? 2. Why on earth was this movie even made?...and the true puzzler of the evening...3. Why did I waste two hours of my all too short life watching it?
See this Movie, campaign.
posted on 21 Apr 2008In my efforts at subtle social engineering through cinema, I implore people to see this movie.What an ambitious film, which is equal in quality to the written word. I was surprised to learn how young the Polish brothers are and that they wrote the thing, which sounds like good Tim Findley. Ridiculouly good. And supposedly made for peanuts, ridiculous again. I have to fill in at least 10 lines here, what else to say. Sure its a bit strange, but give it a chance and it may provoke the imagination to savor a unique and enriching experience the way a painting can cause us to reflect each of us upon something unexpected, or the way a wonderful meal can make us feel better for reasons we don't fully understand. Creative, imaginative, visionary, (these are three different things, by the way) and full of unyielding guts. SEE IT NOW, AND SEE ANYTHING THESE GUYS HAVE DONE, FROM NOW ON. OKAY, THAT'S IT.
A film about loss and transition
posted on 03 Apr 2008It is the year 1955. In Northfork, Montana a hydroelectric dam is being built that will submerge the town and force the evacuation of the entire population. Many leave voluntarily but some refuse to go and an evacuation team is set up to root out the resisters. With bizarre humor reminiscent of Roy Andersson's Songs From the Second Floor, Northfork, Michael Polish's third film (Twin Falls Idaho, Jackpot) is a surreal meditation on identity and loss, on our resistance to letting go. According to Polish, we are "forced to be in transition and that's a hard place to be, that's a gray area we're all very uncomfortable with." Beautifully photographed by Mark Polish and cinematographer M. David Mullen in a faded color palette that is close to black and white, the stunning landscapes of the Great Plains evoke a feeling of nostalgia for a way of life that has been eviscerated by the homogenization of our culture. As the film opens, a coffin bubbles up to the surface on a windswept lake in Northfolk, Montana, which we are told existed from 1776 to 1955. Irwin (Duel Farnes), a young boy, left behind by his parents because of illness, is fighting for his life. He stays with the local priest, Father Harlan (Nick Nolte) who is motivated by compassion for the boy and vainly tries to find a family to adopt him before the flood destroys the town.An Evacuation Committee is formed of Kafkaesque bureaucrats whose job is to evacuate sixty-five households by any means necessary. As a reward, each will receive 1.5 acres of lakefront property. The men are divided into teams of two who look like stories of the men in black from UFO encounters, wearing black trench coats and driving around in black sedans. The camera follows one team more closely than others, that of Walter O'Brien (James Woods) and his son Willis (Mark Polish). They go about their task with a cold efficiency and without much pleasure. O'Brien offers residents a pair of angel wings as enticements to leave but the job does not go well. They are attacked with a shotgun and meet a man with two wives who has built an ark and is waiting for a sign from God before he will agree to move out.They do show some deadpan humor, however, when they exhume the remains of their wife and mother so that her coffin doesn't bob up and down when the water rushes in. In a real or imagined visit, Irwin meets some very unlikely looking angels who have come to Earth to find him. These include: Flower Hercules (Daryl Hannah), an androgynous parent figure; Cod (Ben Foster), a mute cowboy; Happy (Anthony Edwards) who wears glasses with multiple lenses; and Cup of Tea (Robin Sachs), the resident skeptic. Irwin who has received assurances from father Harlan that he is an angel, tries to convince the group that he is the lost member of their flock and shows them the scars on his back where his wings were amputated as evidence.The film moves between magical scenes of the boy and his angels and the dreary activities of the committees and their prey. Each clings to their last bit of resistance to the inevitable, the boy in his dreams, the townspeople who wait for the flood. Polish seems to be saying that destiny must be fulfilled for cities as well as people, and that the result will be the same whether we fly away on a pair of angel wings or ride in a pickup truck. Like Dead Man, Jim Jarmusch's impenetrable ode to the old West, Northfork will mean different things to each viewer but it is not easily forgotten. It is a haunting and original film that challenges our complacency and asks us to look at death as a journey and at how we may handle our own transition to the holy other.
A Modern Masterpiece
posted on 30 Aug 2009Just go with the flow and enjoy this one with all its fine idealism and lack of conventional structure. It is most definately not a formula movie so if you like reality television shows, and perhaps even if you like any prime time television, this is probably not a movie for you. It is not pretentious or pedantic or pedagogic, but maybe guilty of exceeding its reach, but its grasp is firm and even handed. It speaks on the touchy, difficult topics of death and redemption, new beginnings, teleogy, changes that occur in life and how our interpretations of the same event are formed based on our perspectives of relative gain and loss. Not surprisingly, in the end, you are left to sort out these things for yourself. It is a modern masterpiece.