The screenwriter Michael Seitzman has rearranged the facts and created connections that don't exist in the record in order to spread out before us an epic depiction of sexist behavior, covering everything from job discrimination to battery to rape, with every form of Stand-By-Your-Man and blaming-the-victim in between. Josey's father, for instance, is among the miners who believe that women don't belong in the mine (whereas, according to Bingham and Gansler, Jenson's father Joe "was all for his daughter working at the mine"); her supervisor is a guy she flirted with in high school and who witnessed the rape in which her older child was conceived; the lawyer she hires is a friend of Glory's that she's trying to set Josey up with. Meanwhile, her mother (Sissy Spacek) believes Josey's place is at home with her kids, and both her parents turn their backs when her husband shows up and starts manhandling Josey. Dad tells Josey that taking a job at the mine will just humiliate her out-of-work husband, as if that should be her first consideration.
Even the other female mineworkers think that Josey brings trouble on them all by speaking out against their demeaning treatment. Josey, like the Little Red Hen, can't get any of the other women to join in her class action suit, not even Glory who's too devoted to the union and her own sense of invulnerability. In the movie there are only four possible candidates, although the District Court stated, "Plaintiffs asserted that 65 women have been employed at Eveleth Mines since December 13, 1983, and at least 23 women have applied for employment." 139 F.R.D. at 664. And according to Bingham and Gansler, when their attorney said they would need a woman who worked in the pits to make the plaintiffs representative of the class on behalf of which they were suing, Pat Kosmach "chimed in" with, "I've heard a few tough stories out of the pit. I think I can help you find a gal over there who would join us."
North Country is thus not an epic of working-class life but of the various forms of sexual oppression to be encountered in it, and Josey is at the center of every one of them. This has the effect of turning a woman who battled for justice for well over a decade into a perpetual victim. (Even her son turns against her.) With her boo-hoo blue eyes, Theron's Josey is as put-upon as Anna Moore, the country maiden played by Lillian Gish in D.W. Griffith's Way Down East (1920). Anna is tricked into a fake wedding by a city slicker and then abandoned; the illegitimate child she gives birth to dies. She finds work on a farm but when the squire of the farmstead learns of her past he throws Anna out into the snow. His son, the sensitive hero, then rescues her from an ice floe as it's about to take her over a waterfall. North Country is Victorian melodrama in feminist workduds: the valiant hero is now Josey's lawyer and abusive discovery the waterfall.
Article comments
1 - Bill Fraser
This is a superb movie review. In fact, the review is more engaging than the movie. It analyzes North Country in the level of detail I'd like to see in every movie review. The disingenuous attitude film makers adopt that they have to alter historical facts drastically to engage the audience's attention in the story is a combination of laziness and contempt for the audience. In fact, in claiming to represent the true interests of the protagonists, by using distortion and outright fiction to bolster the audience’s supposed lack of interest in historical storytelling, they actual work *against* the interests of the protagonists " the audience is left with no clear belief in what’s real and what’s made up. It’s like Barry Bonds and steroids " how do we know how many of his accomplishments are legitimate?
We all understand that no one can capture the whole truth, that truth is always a composite of multiple viewpoints, and every director’s choice to leave something in or out is a subjective editing decision. But it’s a lazy copout to substitute fiction for fact for the majority of a movie’s content, as a reaction to the daunting task of presenting a compelling story which is generally true to historical accuracy, though by necessity truncated via subjective editing decisions.
What a shame that Lois Jenson’s and a few of the plaintiffs’ gritty, persistent heroism has been turned into a sort of Hallmark movie card, which cheapens the immense sacrifices they made. As the reviewer Alan Dale says, “Acquaintance with the facts makes it plain that the behavior the women were subjected to was so scurrilous that moviemakers wouldn't have to make anything up.” Throughout the movie I was discussing with my wife (we watched at home) how this character’s actions and that situation didn’t ring true, while simultaneously expressing admiration and sympathy for the main character’s plight and courage. This isn’t the way I like to watch a movie. I prefer to be drawn in to a movie’s plot and characters because of the ring of truth that resounds in every scene. However, the movie did make me aware of the Jenson vs. Evelyth Mines case and prompt me to do some research, bring me to this excellent movie review, The Kitchen Cabinet, and del.icio.us, where I hope to find more thought-provoking and well-written articles.
2 - Alan Dale
Thanks for the comment, Bill, and the praise. I was disgusted to read this news report, that a New York Women in Film & Television survey had declared North Country the most-important film for women to see in 2005. To learn from by negative example? I'm afraid the survey respondents must have liked it not despite the movie's evident flaws but because of them--because of the slick way it sells "feminism." If people want candy they're going to have candy, no matter how much more nutritious and subtly flavorful fruit may be.