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'North Country' doesn't do justice to the real tale
Based on a landmark case, the film's presentation is just too convenient.
Charlize Theron stars in "North Country." The film opens today.See it, rate it
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If men are pigs, men from northern Minnesota, with a few exceptions, are outright hogs. At least that's the way it appears in the overly facile, passion-by-the-numbers "North Country," a film about sexual harassment that doesn't even have the guts to stand by a woman's right to be sexually active and equal in the workplace.
All the familiar ingredients show up in "North Country": the abused woman who stands up for herself, the sympathetic neutered male friend, the brave co-worker with a debilitating disease, the stubborn parent who comes to his senses, the rousing moment when all those who've abandoned our heroine come back to her.
And bad guys -- wow, are there bad guys -- every one of whom, blue collar or white collar, literally oozes yucky behavior. It's telling that in this movie, the only one of the bad guys who exhibits anything close to a brain is a female attorney. Otherwise, she's surrounded by hogs.
Understand that this is no knock on sexual harassment laws. This is a knock on trite drama that is delivered in the guise of wisdom. Every argument presented here is good and righteous. It's the presentation that's too convenient.
Charlize Theron is obviously bucking for another Oscar by playing Josey Aimes. Abused by her boyfriend, Josey returns to her hometown with adolescent son Sammy (Thomas Curtis) and young daughter Karen (Elle Peterson) and moves back in with her folks. Her mother (Sissy Spacek) welcomes her with open arms while her grumbling father (Richard Jenkins) figures she was probably asking for trouble, just like all those times before.
Her father and most of the town's men work in the local mine, and when Josey takes a job there, spurred on by old buddy Glory (Frances McDormand), she immediately runs into an ugly wall of sexism. The men resent women for taking jobs that were traditionally male, and they harass them as a matter of course. The more the women stand up for themselves, the more overt, crude and consistent the harassment gets.
Josey puts up with it for a while but, being a certifiable hottie and the unmarried mother of two kids, the sexual advances become intolerable.
When she goes to the president of the company, he proves himself to be a card-carrying hog as well. So Josey turns to a new friend (Woody Harrelson), who just happens to be a hockey legend and former high-powered New York attorney. She wants to sue the company.
All of which is well and good. And there's no denying the despicable acts encountered by Josey, or their roots in despicable reality. But screenwriter Michel Seitzman, working from Clara Bingham's book, and director Niki Caro ("Whale Rider") pour the drama on too heavy in too many overly familiar ways. All of this is supposed to be "based on a true story" in the way so many films take a real incident (there was such a lawsuit) and fill it out with convenient characters.
The worst offense here, though, is when an inevitable courtroom attack of Josey's sexual past turns ugly, the screenplay conveniently comes up with a big excuse for her. Single moms don't need excuses for being sexually active and women of any sort don't need justification for standing up to sexual harassment.
If anyone leaves this film the wiser or more tolerant for its message, then it has served a great purpose.
But in overdoing the theatrics and hammering the clichés "North Country" does artistic injustice to its own important argument.
You can reach Tom Long at (313) 222-8879 or tlong@detnews.com.
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