A 94-year-old North Dakota man comes across a late friend's diary and sits at a typewriter "to put down a good yarn about those old times." John Hanson and Rob Nilsson's 1978 treasure Northern Lights—screening at Film Forum in a newly restored 35mm print—presents the cheerful fellow, Henry Martinson (Hanson's real-life grandfather, playing himself), as a frame around a hard past. Through him, the film enters 1915-set flashbacks involving a small community of Norwegian farmers and first-generation descendants (all photographed by Judy Irola in harsh, sharp black-and-white) struggling to survive fierce winters and crueler bosses and banks. Henry's friend, the young farmer Ray Sorenson (played by Robert Behling), takes focus as his voiceover narrates how he was drawn in...
- 9/18/2013
- Village Voice
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