Northfork : Mary Kate Curry

I enjoyed this film very much, both for its haunting visuals, as well as for the questions it brought to my mind about the nature of death and the role of angels. What in particular I liked the most about the movie was its use of language, and the humor that the language provided against the stark reality of the situation. (For example, while examining the wings the maybe-angel Irwin has brought them, Happy states that “…there's nothing fowl about these wings.) This puns and plays on words give a little smile against the bleakness of the Montana backdrop.

Beyond the humor afforded by the puns and plays, language also offers an interesting insight as to the potential theme of the film. The town of Northfork must be evacuated, and her inhabitants placed in exiled, because Northfork is literally on the edge of being dammed (damned). A sense of loss and abandonment permeate the film; made physical by the shots of an empty town, wind whistling through ghost-like houses. The theme of abandonment is made especially clear in the case of Irwin, a dying orphan ‘returned’ by his guardians because he is too weak to make the journey to the replacement town. He has been left behind and abandoned, unable to join the mass exodus. Shepherding Irwin to his death is the town’s priest, Father Harlan, whose whispering, gravelly voice mourns the death of the town, which is being lost to industrialization and the name of progress.

But, the presence of strange angels looking for their ‘lost family member’ bring up the point that when Northforks was founded, it had caused the extinction of those who had come before—the Native Americans who had lived and loved there; and who were extinguished in order to make way for the settlers and their progress. The angels bring this concept up, because it is in the presence of the angels that the metaphorical tranquilizer gun and feathers are introduced. Irwin had been free, he said, roaming with birds, when suddenly he was shot, and had his wings cut off. This can be seen as a parallel to the slaughter of the buffalo, the displacement of the Native Americans, and the removal of their culture (the removal of the wings…). So, the inhabitants of Northforks are not the first victims of this process; but simply make up part of a cycle.

What is the cost of progress? What do we lose when we move? Nick Nolte’s character despairs at digging up the grave of his wife; but how could one simply walk away from death? Death is a blatant presence, from the dying town, to the dying child, to the dug up graveyard, with its one lonely occupant waiting to be reclaimed. Is death unforgiving, a punishing repeat of the same damning cycle? Or is death really just going home, as Irwin seems to believe it to be?