Beautifully dark and depressing...

So I saw North Country last night with Merri. We were planning on seeing The Weather Man with Nicholas Cage, but the theatre cancelled the late showing to make room for an additional screening of Jarhead, which is apparently a huge hit with the military crowd.

We were very, very impressed with North Country. It's an unbelievably powerful film, one that plays with your emotions non-stop. The film makes you cry, makes you angry, shocks you, and ultimately, makes you hopeful. I believe that every single actor and actress in this film is worthy of an Oscar nomination, from Charlize Theron, Sissy Spacek, and (especially) Frances McDormand, to the male actors like Woody Harrelson, Sean Bean, and (especially) Richard Jenkins.

The film is about the first ever class-action sexual harassment suit, filed against a mining company in northern Minnesota. The film makes it clear early on that its story is "inspired" by true events, which makes the somewhat over-the-top courtroom scenes in the end permissible. But it's the director, Niki Caro, whose previous film Whale Rider was the best family film to ever receive an unnecessary PG-13 by the MPAA, who makes North Country special. With her beautiful sweeping shots of the mine and the small town that harbors it, the great musical choices, and the bleak blues and blacks which make up the film's color scheme, she turns what could've been just another "woman takes on the world" movie and makes it into an intimate portrait of a small town struggling with the constant gender battles in the workplace. Go see it.