Boldly Going Where No Woman Has Gone Before: NORTH COUNTRY

NORTH COUNTRY is one of those movies you go to because you feel like you should. Nobody really looks forward to sitting through The Accused or Shindler's List. Kind of like none of the women in this story really looked forward to going to work in mines, where only one in thirty workers were female and the industry wide sexual harrassment went right up to corporate. NORTH COUNTRY is a fictionalized account of a real class action lawsuit that changed the way these type of companies had to do business, a 1984 case in the Northern Minnesota Eveleth Mines. The movie is set in 1989, againstt the backdrop of the Anita Hill hearings in congress, and though that touch-up is not the only the story receives, it is one of the most inspired.

Director Niki Cairo (WHALE RIDER) a New Zealand native, faithfully delivers a strong case for the women, led by CHarlize Theron (in yet another role where they have to cover her in gunk so she is less pretty) and the always outstanding Francis McDormand. The sense of dread rises each day on the job as incidents build. And then comes the third act, the trial scene, which really kind of blows it for the whole film. My lawyer wife says that on the top of their being some unrealistic witness badgering and twists in the courtroom, the hollywoodization of the case forced them to concentrate on the issues of sexual promiscuity in the plaintiff rather than what the case was really about, sexual harrassment in the workpalce, and right when the movie should be brac ing up to make its point, it dives back into a flashback that has very little to do with what the story was about. I have to fully agree with her. I left the movie partially moved, but not nearly as much as I felt I should have been. There are changes of character than just happen, for no reason. There are big 'moments' that in the long run would mean nothing. And there are entire characters in the film that seeem to have nothing to do with the story it is trying to tell. So its clunky to summarize. And the real trial it is based on went for 10 years. It seems to me that the story created this central character to hang its theme on, and then they were kind of stuck with her, and it is in the third act where her story began to superceed that of the woman vs. mine, and became a referrendum on her teenage pregnancy. Yeah, its that far-removed. But that doesn't kill the moving completely. The performances are great, especially Sissy Spacek as Theron's mother (I could watch her read the phone book) and the ensemble of women at the mine, including Michelle Monaghan (fresh off the role of Harmony in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) and Rusty Schwimmer as Big Betty. And the filming of the mine and the work done in it is world that you never get to see perfectly captured.

NORTH COUNTRY is recommended for women miners, people who want to catch the first two-thirds of a film, fans of Sissy Spacek, and anyone who ever thought their job was shit. Rick's Rathing: B.