By Thom Fowler
July 11, 2003
Wherin the Polish Brothers discuss their critically acclaimed film, NORTHFORK
Magical Realism has been called “fantasy written in Spanish.” It is almost a hallmark of mid-20th Century Latin-American literature and has been well expressed in the works of writers such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Isabel Allende. NORTHFORK’s use of magical realism creates a dreamscape world which is constantly crossing over from one reality to the next, from natural to supernatural, leaving the film open to a variety of interpretations.
The legend of NORTHFORK is that at in the past, angels roamed the plains of Northfork, Montana. When the settlers and pioneers arrived, the angles were hunted to near extinction. An orphan boy left in the care of the local clergyman (Nick Nolte) is trying to convince a group of gypsy-like ghosts with names like Flower Hercules (Daryl Hannah), Happy (Anthony Edwards) and Cup of Tea (Robin Sachs) that he is the last angel they are looking for. Meanwhile, the evacuation committee headed by Walter O’Brien (James Woods) is busy trying to convince the last remaining hold-outs to move along before a dam project is opened and the town is destroyed by the flood.
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Roger Ebert hails this movie as a “visionary masterpiece” which thrilled the parent company, Paramount Pictures and there is talk of at least a Best Cinematography Oscar™ campaign. The film’s muted, de-saturated color and stark landscapes are the beautiful frame around the richly detailed, innovative set and costumes which are reminiscent of Jeunet and Caro’s CITY OF LOST CHILDREN or the Brothers Quay film INSTITUT BENJAMENTA.
The amount of attention this film has been getting has far exceeded the expectations of Paramount Classics. Nick Nolte, who doesn’t even like to watch his own movies, sat and watched the film seven times. “He loves the movie. He loves talking about the movie and having discussions about it. When he’s talking about other movies that he doesn’t really enjoy, he shuts down. But NORTHFORK, he really loves it.”
The Polish Brothers thought their movie, a labor of love, would be too obscure for a mass audience but they discovered the exact opposite to be true. Mark said, “I’m surprised how people have gotten it. That’s what really surprises me. The way the audience in Dallas articulated this movie is pretty amazing. We do these screenings to help educate people about why this film is the way it is but it’s the opposite. It seems like people are ready for a movie like this. They are enjoying it.”
One woman may have been a little too ready for this movie at a recent screening in Los Angeles. There is a pivotal speech near the end of the film where Nolte’s character talks about accepting death, and she went into a diabetic coma and died shortly afterwards at the hospital. While the paramedics were taking the woman away, the audience sat still patiently waiting to resume the Q and A. “Nobody seemed to care. It was like, ‘Shove her aside, we want to hear what this fucking movie is about,’” said Michael. And Mark replied, “They all accepted death. It was a weird moment.”
Thom: Why do you think people are so prepared to deal with this movie?
Mark: I don’t know. If you are going to a movie that lacks in clarity, something you have never seen before with a structure that doesn’t tell you exactly what it’s about but doesn’t put you off at the same time, you go along for the ride.
Thom: What does this film represent for you as a film maker?
Michael: I thought it was an achievement. Setting out and saying “we are going to make this film” when we didn’t have financial security, we had nowhere to turn back to. We didn’t have a studio or anybody to fall back to if things go really bad, which they were starting to in the sense of finances. And just being able to complete it and show it to people, that was our main achievement. Artistically, there was a lot more room to grow but I’m happy with this.
Mark: This is a film that when I look back on, more than the first two, I really appreciated the motifs that we created and the actors that are in it. It was choreographed the way we wanted to see it. We wanted more time with certain scenes but the over-all experience, Twin Falls Idaho was really about making your first movie and making sure it was coherent. Jackpot was a road movie. This seemed to have everything we wanted in it and visually it spoke exactly the way we wanted.
Thom: What was your personal investment in the film?
Mark: I was seeing how far we could push the narrative structure and not having to rely on a narrative which tells you everything. We wanted to see how much we could sustain with the visual and tell this movie purely with pictures.
Thom: Were any of those images or elements you worked with fetishistic for you in any way?
Michael: Fetishistic in the way we photographed them with how we used light and how dark we could get the image and still register what they meant. Fetish in the way of the actual detail wasn’t anything I particularly went other than just the way we composed the picture.
Thom: So there was no strong psychological attraction to tea cups, for example.
Michael: I thought the kid would have those things.
Thom: You were working from the point of view from the character rather than trying to get out your own personal infatuations?
Mark: We were saying, “What would Irwin need to cross over.” “What would Father Harlan need.” What did each character need to go further. What did Walter need for him to go pick up his wife?
Thom: When you say, “What does this character need to go further” do you mean, “What will take this character to the next point in the story” because the characters were static in a lot of ways, like how in a sitcom, the character never changes whereas in feature films, characters are supposed to change.
Michael: The kid’s fever needed to get high to go places. He need to reach death. It was very hard to have a barometer of what we needed to move this kid’s story because his story was really, “Am I an angel. Can I convince these people I’m an angel. Do I have wings.” The movie is really about him dying.
Thom: There were some leitmotifs in the film, like corruption and redemption. There is a lot of moral difficulty that some of the characters had to face.
Michael: We set up everyone in transition. From body to spirit from living to dying from land ownership to forced relocation. We were trying to ask, “What are the things you use to guide you.”
Mark: Humans are creatures of habit. It’s so difficult for us to go from one place to another. It’s a hard thing to even leave a bad relationship.
Thom: What is it that interests you about shifting in and out of different realities, this world and the next, the human world and the world of spirit, reality and a delusional break with reality.
Michael: This movie is really in the gray area. The film explores that without giving an exact science about it. You have people saying, “where am I going to go when I get up and leave.” “Where is this boy going to go when he dies.”
Mark: Fundamental changes always seem like a death. The fascination I’ve had with this, the whole time growing up being Catholic it was all about living a good life for the afterlife so you are constantly barraged with images of sacrifice. A lot of that stuff is brought out in the film, like the confessional. Death is a fascinating subject and should be looked at as a birth, not just an ending.
Michael: When a dam goes up, you block water. So you are killing a river. The death of a person looks like it’s stopping but the energy is still moving. It gets kind of hokey when you start trying to explain it. You are stopping the flow of a river and you are stopping life at the same time.
Thom: What has surprised you the most about how well this film has been received?
Mark: The big mother Paramount has infiltrated the camp for this movie and that has never happened before. We started to talk to the president of the big Paramount.
Michael: This is the first film that they’ve gotten behind. I have a feeling they want to get nominated for at least Cinematography because they don’t have a film on their slate to compete in that category. They have their machine and they have their feelers out. It’s really beyond us.
Mark: It’s good for us. We are talking to people that would usually never talk to independent film makers.
Michael: They have their angle, they want to see if we are going to take it or not. They don’t want any child dying at all. They don’t want death associated with this film at all.
[There was a thoughtful pause here seeing as how it would be hard to skirt the issue of death in a film that even the film makers say is, among other things, about a boy dying.]
Thom: So what’s next?
Mark: Lately, I’ve gotten into exploring the comic book realm but Michael and I are pretty late to that game.
Thom: I am not an avid collector of comic books but people will often tell me about titles they think I’ll like.
Mark: Someone, after seeing our movie, gave us some Neil Gaiman comics because NORTHFORK made them think of Neil Gaiman and SANDMAN. I was reading AMERICAN GODS and I just wondered how he came up with any of his ideas.
Thom: Neil Gaiman doesn’t have to worry about where his next meal is coming from so he can get completely lost in his work. People don’t realize that writers are completely isolated human beings. We are so involved in the human story but we are hardly ever in human contact.
Mark: That’s so true.
Michael: It’s just like NORTHFORK. NORTHFORK was a movie that was made in isolation. That’s what happens when you cut yourself off. That’s complete freedom. Restricted budget and time, but complete artistic freedom.
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