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Deep in 1950's Montana, two days before the plains are covered by an artificial lake, a group of men sent by the hydroelectric company tries to expel the last irascible inhabitants of Northfork, an insulated and sparse village. During this time, under the protection of a priest (Nick Nolte), a young orphan boy dies, ready to join a group of angels who seem to wait for him in an abandoned house. Close to the cinema of Brian de Palma, David Cronenberg and David Lynch with its theme and strange environment, Twin Falls Idaho, however, was like a personal work marked with sadness, where the Polish brothers exorcized the very strong psychological bond that binds them as twins with the physical attachment as Siamese twins playing out as a metaphor. Jackpot, an interesting but disconcerting film which advanced blindfolded, without ever taking a position, introduced the concept of Americana, offering a disillusioned but sensitive vision of deep America. Northfork, the third installment of this trilogy, or triptych by implication of the angels, imposes in the continuity of the two preceding films through its themes, but finally exposes the singular and ambitious palette of the Polish brothers. While the angels (Daryl Hannah and Anthony Edwards), coming straight out of this dusty painting, return to baroque art, the hydroelectric company agents dressed in black and wearing hats (James Woods, Mark Polish and Peter Coyote) point to paintings by Magritte and Dali as they roam through vast stretches. But their cinema shows their cinematographic heritage as well. The house built like Noah's Ark, anchored in the dry ground, brings surrealist painters to mind as much as the films of Emir Kusturica (Arizona Dream in particular) or Fitzcarraldo by Werner Herzog. Beyond the inevitable mention of Wim Wenders (Wings of Desire), the angel played by Anthony Edwards has a very Johnny Depp side to him, a cross between Edward Scissorhands and Ichabod Crane (Sleepy Hollow), and thus a Burtonian figure par excellence. This taste for the strange obviously causes comparison to Lynch and Cronenberg, but their approach is more poetic, less exacerbated, preferring light tonalities. However, this will to create a world obeying their own codes whose keys are presented in certain scenes, i.e. the child's room, like the painting in the abandoned house, offers the necessary hints to an audience navigating between dream and reality. In Northfork one finds recurring themes in the Polish brothers' filmography. The concept of fraternal ambivalence, in the center of Twin Falls Idaho and induced in Jackpot through the singer/manager duo, is approached under a new angle here, the filial bond between James Woods and Mark Polish (and between the priest and child); the setting never far, one can certainly see a reference there to the role of the model exerted by Woods, as an actor, on the younger generation. The influence of the twins, however, has not been forgotten like the house cut in two, witnessed, while each pair of men in black officiates like a fraternal unfolding. The ambivalence, at blood level, is obviously put in parallel with the opposition between worlds which sometimes get confused: reality and dream, life and the beyond. The desaturated cinematographic palette, allied with the extreme slowness of the full-length film and certain historical elements, causes sadness but also gives the whole work the air of a newspaper yellowed by time: we are in 1955. As for the social context, Northfork, a close look at the depopulation of certain areas and business as the real conqueror, can also just as easily be compared to the activity of large chains crushing small businesses—a theme well done by Six Feet Under, as well as to a latent imperialism where independent cinema has been crushed by large productions A fascinating and singular work, Northfork, one hopes, will open a new door for an American cinema that's too compartmentalized.
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