Classic Americana and a coherent storyline meet an impasse on the road to NORTHFORK, the Polish Brothers' strikingly photographed but pretentious new movie. Time: 1955. A huge, Federally funded hydroelectric dam is about to engulf and bury forever a small Montana town under water. Ominous looking government agents, dressed funereally in long black coats and fedoras show up in a last ditch effort to evacuate the remaining inhabitants. These townsfolk are a diverse and peculiar lot : a sickly little boy abandoned by his parents and under the care of a slovenly priest ; a religious zealot who refuses to leave his Noah's Ark-like house; and four "Angels", seemingly ghosts from the last century who dwell in a dust laden Victorian mansion and offer hospitality to the little boy. All these characters live in a indescribably haunting setting conjured up by Mark and Michael Polish as an elegy to the past and the dearly departed. Death hangs like a drape cloth in nearly every frame of this movie, giving the eerily beautiful Montana landscape and buildings a dried bone skeletal look. Think Georgia O'Keefe without the flowers.
Unfortunately this magnificent tableaux is wasted on an esoteric screenplay that will infuriate many viewers. NORTHFORK is an incomprehensible mess, filled with enigmatic sentences, unclear character motivations and off-putting, flippant remarks. Director Michael Polish has a gifted camera eye but he needs to learn how to speak more clearly to his audience. Eloquent imagery isn't enough.
Unfortunately this magnificent tableaux is wasted on an esoteric screenplay that will infuriate many viewers. NORTHFORK is an incomprehensible mess, filled with enigmatic sentences, unclear character motivations and off-putting, flippant remarks. Director Michael Polish has a gifted camera eye but he needs to learn how to speak more clearly to his audience. Eloquent imagery isn't enough.