"A movie for
surrealists and movie-lovers and admirers of the vanishing Heartland."

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

A movie for surrealists and movie-lovers and admirers of the vanishing
Heartland. Northfork is a bizarrely humorous and a visually entrancing
realistic but magical tale from the Polish brothers, the twin sibling filmmakers
of Twin Falls Idaho and Jackpot. This time they tackle the theme about
witnessing death for an unloved angelic child and an innocent small town.
It's 1955 in the fictional Great Plains town of Northfork, Montana, settled
by Europeans in the 18th century that lies near the river of the same name.
The remote town is being evacuated as a power dam is being built that will
flood the area and the state sends in an Evacuation Committee of 6 federal
agents to do its bidding, who if they can evict the 65 remaining diehard
residents they will receive 1 1/2 acres of prime lakefront land. The agents
have a twisted sense of humor as they try to justify the dirty work they
are asked to do, as their boss reassures them that their mission is angelic
because they are saving lives by taking the residents to higher ground.
All look like funeral directors or prototypical FBI agents wearing matching
charcoal black overcoats, fedoras, suits, and driving similar shiny spit-polished
black Fords. While the ominous agents are busy evacuating the last hardnut
cases to take the state's monetary offer of leaving, a cowardly but guilt-ridden
young couple, ironically named Mr. and Mrs. Hope, return their chronically
ill dying foster son Irwin (Farnes) to the compassionate Father Harlan
(Nolte) because they say all the doctors have left and he's too weak to
travel with them. The grizzled saintly preacher says he will try to forgive
them for their weakness. The adolescent Irwin faces death by dreaming that
he's an abandoned angel shot down from his flock when he was 4 and unable
to fly because he lost his wings. He comes across an odd family of four
misfit travelers, who are apparently flawed angels looking for an unknown
angel they lost. They are wearing costumes from the Victorian era and consist
of a randy, alcohol drinking, cynical Englishman named Cup of Tea (Sachs);
an androgynous, tender, childless soul named Flower Hercules (Hannah),
who cares the most for Irwin; a taciturn and stoic cowboy named Cod (Foster);
and, a bubbly mute curiosity seeker double-amputee with prosthetic arms
named Happy (Edwards), who is using an assortment of heavy lensed glasses
to cover-up for his blindness. Irwin urges them to take him along on their
journey because he's convinced that he's the unknown angel they were looking
for. The angels apparently have the same handicaps in the otherworld as
they had on earth.

This strange tale is opaque, as the western landscape seems washed
of its natural coloring in favor of dominating brownish and greyish shades
of Technicolor. It is brilliantly photographed by cinematographer M. David
Mullen. Though the story never builds and instead remains steady as a death
vigil for town and boy, it was never dull and seemed freshly portrayed
in the original style the Polish brothers used to paint their screen with
extensive symbolic images. It seemed to be content with letting its visuals
do all its talking, as the chatter was used to create humorously odd situations
and in a whimsical manner hold out hope for the unknown being possibly
a good thing.

The action opens as the preacher gives his sermon in a desolate church
with a missing back wall that looks as if it were painted by Norman Rockwell,
as he sermonizes that  "We are all angels. It is what we do with our
wings that separates us." He then receives back the ill foster child from
the young couple and tries to comfort the almost comatose child by securing
a bed in the orphanage and anti-biotics for his pain. In a short time the
town will be flooded by the new hydroelectric project and will become a
ghost town as the 6 agents, who work in pairs, arrive and are given their
final orders by their boss to try to get the stragglers moved anyway they
think possible. The bureaucratic mantra becomes: “The State understands
your difficulty in moving on.” They each run into heavy resistance from
their targets. The main team consists of Walter O'Brien (Woods) and his
son Willis (Mark Polish). Their mission is to evacuate a religious nut,
Mr. Stalling, whose house is built like Noah's Ark and he has two of everything–including
two wives. Stalling's won't budge until he gets a clear sign from God.
Walter, who was a resident of Northfork, also is preoccupied with removing
his deceased wife's body from the cemetery before the whole place becomes
a lake, or if not removed she will become like the catch of the day.

The preacher, the voice of reason for the filmmakers, says at one
point, “It all depends on how you look at it; we’re either half way to
heaven or half way to hell.” It's very much similar in theme to Wim Wenders'
film "Wings of Desire." Some might not buy into all the whimsical mysticism
and might not be able to suspend their disbelief of angels or that the
barren American western landscape is mythic and that people can be redeemed
and find salvation in another state of mind. Northfork has its soft side
that might not pass muster for all tastes, but I was taken in by its uniqueness
and uncompromising attempt to show how the young and old, the disenfranchised
and the struggling privileged, the Chevy and Ford owner, must cope with
loss and leaving the only place they might have a familiarity with. It
is true that this line of trajection could have been further probed in
a more insightful way and a more mystical outcome could have been achieved
rather than the film being mostly seductive without achieving a conquest.
But that begs the point, as the Polish brothers inventively invade the
territory separating dreams from reality and carefully blur the line of
separation, allowing the viewer to see what they care to. I haven't come
across a film so far this year that was as challenging as Northfork, and
if there's a smudge here and there I can live with it from filmmakers who
are not afraid to take risks and shun the formulaic way of filming. 

This indie was shot in 24 days in Northern Montana, as the open-sky
landscape gives it an epic feel.