Although she undoubtedly figures prominently in the fantasies of legions of males around the globe, Charlize Theron doesn't seem too interested in making it easy for men to watch her movies. In 2003's Monster, Theron bulked up and hid her physical charms under layers of latex to play Aileen Wuornos, an abused woman who channeled her considerable anger by systematically seeking out men and killing them.
In North Country, Theron once again plays a victimized female who becomes a threat to the mean old misogynist world. This time, however, her character addresses her grievances in a more socially acceptable manner, and she winds up looking an awful lot like a hero.
North Country is an uncomplicated but rousing tale of female empowerment and workers' rights in the good ol' fashioned, issues-oriented style of Norma Rae, Silkwood and other movies based on the struggles of real-life heroines. The real-life heroine who provided the inspiration for North Country is Lois Jensen, a name that won't come tripping off most tongues, but probably ought to.
As the individual responsible for filing the nation's first class action suit for sexual harassment, way back in the waning years of the 1980s, Jensen struck a major blow for women's rights and, by extension, altered the whole discourse, both public and private, between the sexes. By that measurement, you might even consider Jensen a key player in helping define the rules of political correctness that have become the blessing and curse of our daily lives. Clearly, this is a woman with a lot to answer for.
Don't look to North Country for those answers. Sure, this would have been a more intriguing film had it managed to touch on that whole mixed-bag aspect of political correctness, but North Country does just fine with a more grass roots agenda. What we have here is a solid piece of commercial filmmaking that manages to entertain by dramatizing and humanizing some of the reasons PC came into being in the first place.
Theron plays the Jensen-esque character, here renamed Josey Aimes, who goes from frying pan to fire when she runs away from an abusive husband only to land smack dab in the middle of a work place polluted by some of the nastiest testosterone around. North Country piles on the pain, showing us how Aimes is hit on and hurt by leering male colleagues until she reluctantly hires a lawyer and goes public with her story, despite knowing the adverse effects her boat-rocking will have on friends and family.
The movie is technically a courtroom drama, but don't let that scare you off. North Country doesn't really feel very courtroom drama-ish (at least not until its somewhat disappointing last act), and the movie is for the most part filled with lively, non-courtroom-based drama and blessedly free of big, high-minded speeches. Our reference point is Josey sitting in a witness stand and telling her story, which unfolds as a series of extended flashbacks. (Then again, maybe it's Josey's story that unfolds in the present and the brief courtroom interludes are actually flash-forwards, but I'll leave that one to be hashed out by those who care.)
Josey's story begins with her trekking across the frozen wastes like some long-suffering silent-movie lioness, young cubs in tow, fleeing a bad-tempered husband for what she assumes will be the comfort of her childhood home. There are ghosts hovering about the home front, however, long-standing frictions that are immediately in evidence when Aimes comes face to face again with her dad (Six Feet Under's Richard Jenkins), a good man but one with very clear ideas about what a woman should and should not be. The tension between Josey and her father reaches crisis mode when she decides to apply for a job at the local iron mines, a staunchly male domain where the Aimes patriarch has spent a lifetime toiling.
North Country is the Hollywood debut of the talented New Zealand director Niki Caro, whose much loved Whale Rider took a somewhat more mystical approach to the predicament of a lone female treading in traditionally male territory. Caro fleshes out the dynamics of North Country's tight-knit, Minnesota mining community with the same careful attention to detail she brought to the male-dominated Maori society of Whale Rider. But North Country takes the gloves off in ways far removed from the dreamy charm of Whale Rider, getting down and dirty (and, occasionally, just a touch preachy) with its engaging depiction of a woman's lot in a boys-only club.
As we follow Josey's escalating humiliations at the hands of male co-workers and bosses, humiliations that begin relatively innocently but become a well-organized campaign of terror, North Country unfolds as a solid entertainment (combining elements of thriller and soap opera) even as it succeeds in personalizing a critical moment in American history. Caro is not always as subtle as she might be (Josey's struggle unfolds as the Anita Hill hearings beam into TV sets in the background), but that doesn't mean North Country is any less effective in communicating an agenda that conveys female outrage on its way toward a tipping point. North Country may border on agitprop, but it goes down smooth all the same. And it won't make anyone feel too guilty about enjoying it.
Much of the credit for the movie's success goes to the fine ensemble cast (including Frances McDormand, who gets to pull her old Fargo accent out of mothballs, albeit in a significantly toned-down form), and, most of all, to Theron. Not to take anything away from her Oscar-winning turn in Monster, but Theron's performance in North Country, although less flashy and visibly tortured, is probably even more interesting. Theron gives us a sympathetic and richly nuanced character in Josey, a woman painted as both saint and devil, but a far cry from either.
The male characters depicted in North Country, on the other hand, are by and large a pretty despicable lot. I'm guessing that means this won't be most guys' idea of a great date movie, but those who don't mind a little healthy debate will find a trip to North Country well worth his, or her, while.
This article appears in Oct 19-25, 2005.