North Country (Widescreen Edition)
by Niki Caro
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DVD details
Actor: Charlize Theron, Frances Mcdormand, Jeremy Renner, Richard Jenkins, Sean BeanDirector: Niki Caro
Brand: Warner Brothers
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Closed-captioned, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: Widescreen, 2.40:1
Running Time: 126 minutes
Published: 2006-02-01
DVD Release Date: 2006-02-21
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Model: 59340
Studio: Warner Home Video
DVD Reviews of North Country (Widescreen Edition)
DVD Review: Going to work should NOT be a death cage fight.
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a very good movie with a brilliant and powerful performance (yet again) by Charlize Theron. Here she plays a complicated woman named Josie Aimes. While the movie was inspired by the real life lawsuit filed by Lois Jenson, the character and story are fictionalized. Likely to make the story more inspiring. However, I think the basic reality behind such suits is plenty inspiring. In any case, this is a terrific movie.
The movie opens with Josie on the stand being grilled by a female attorney for the company. Since Josie was an unwed teenage mother, the company's attorney uses that to undermine her credibility. Then the movie shows us Josie on the kitchen floor and as she gets up, from the blood we can see she has been horribly assaulted. She takes her two children and moves home with her parents. Her father shows his lack of faith and support for his daughter by asking if her husband hat laid hands on her because he found her with another man.
I don't want to expose the plot of the movie because it is powerful and you should see it. My mother worked in factories as I was growing up when most women did not work outside the home. There was some of the notion that women were taking men's jobs. However, a lot of that was weakened during WWII. The idea that women belonged in certain jobs and not others was indeed very strong. Even within factories.
The forceful point this movie makes is that a job is a job and people, men or women and of any color or ethnic group, should not have to face the kinds of abuse depicted in this film (and in real life it can be much worse). Yes, there are requirements for jobs, but one should not have to go through a fight to the death to land or hold a job.
I am glad that Josie (and especially the real life women) had the courage to stand up to the pressure and social ostracism she had to face to take care of her two kids. In the movie she had NO support; except from her mother (touchingly played by Sissy Spacek) and the friend who got her in the mine, Glory (strongly played by Frances McDormand). Eventually, she meets an old local hockey star who is also a semi-burnt out lawyer named Bill White (Woody Harrelson's most enjoyable performance in a long time) who helps her bring her suit. He brings it not so much because he believes in her cause, but because a class-action sexual harassment suit has never been brought successfully.
The women who suffer with Josie actually resent her standing up to the vile abuse. And it isn't just a bit of catcalling. No, it is also many other kinds of abuse. One particularly vile act is done to Sherry (very well portrayed by Michelle Monaghan). The men resent that the women have gotten porta-johns put on the worksite. When Sherry goes into one that has already been well used, the men start banging on the side and rocking it and finally tip it over with her in it. Yet the women take it because they are told to, because they have to provide for their families, and they realize that standing up will provoke greater attacks. What they don't believe is that they can stand up enough to stop it. The difference is that Josie, alone, believes that she can get it to stop.
Another performance, that holds the key to the movie, I think, is Josie's father, Hank (with a solid performance by Richard Jenkins). He is man caught up in the nightmarish "brotherhood" at the mine, but doesn't agree with it. Josie's apparent waywardness has made his life harder from the social disdain it draws and the disappointment he feels. He has withdrawn emotionally from Josie and even closed off from his wife. He feels incredibly weak and just wants to get through life. Then Josie comes to the mine and makes his life even more miserable even while she is living under his roof. He has choices to make, and what he chooses to do helps the story unfold.
The movie is touching and makes its point well. I particularly like the way the movie has a way of letting you know exactly what happened without having to show the violence and the ugliest events too explicitly. The movie is R-rated and I know many of my friends eschew R-rated movies for good reason. However, I will argue that there are two broad categories of R-rated movies.
The first group that should be ignored is the group of films that depict sex and violence to excite and indulge. The other kind is R-rated the way seeing a friend with cancer is R-rated, the way real life can be R-rated. This is that kind of movie. The language, while rough, is not nearly as vile as it can be in a factory, at a mine, or any industrial operation. And there is a depiction of some particularly sad and horrible events that are there because they are real, and they help us understand Josie and what she really faced and why what happened to her was all wrong. I think this movie is very much worth seeing and recommend it despite its R-rating.
The one thing about the movie I found a bit confusing and bit irritating is its vague time reference. In real life, the suit brought by these women was settled in 1991. However, the movie seems to depict the movie in the 1970s when women first went into the mines in Minnesota. However, several times in the movie, Anita Hill is shown on TV in a completely unnecessary and ham-fisted bit of politicizing. But this is a small irritation compared to the very fine things this movie says about fairness and justice in the workplace.
Description of North Country (Widescreen Edition)
A FICTIONALIZED ACCOUNT OF THE FIRST MAJOR SUCCESSFUL SEXUALHARASSMENT CASE IN THE UNITED STATE - JENSON VS EVELETH MINES,WHERE A WOMAN ENDURED A RANGE OF ABUSE WHILE WORKING AS A MINER FILED & WON THE LANDMARK 1984 LAWSUIT.Bestsellers in DVD
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