‘North Country’
Movie Review
‘North Country’ is a 2005 American film. Directed by Niki Caro, it stars Charlize Theron, Frances McDormand, Sean Bean, Richard Jenkins, Michelle Monaghan, Jeremy Renner, Woody Harrelson, and Sissy Spacek. It was inspired by the 2002 book ‘Class Action: The Story of Lois Jenson and the Landmark Case That Changed Sexual Harassment Law’, by Clara Bingham and Laura Leedy Gansler.
In 1989, Josey Aimes flees from her abusive husband back to her hometown in northern Minnesota with her children, Sammy and Karen, and moves in with her parents. A friend working in the mines encourages her to get a job in the mines, like her. The hope of financial independence leads Josey to seek employment . She gets the job…and a one-way ticket to hell.
The year is 1989 and we are talking the kind of workplace harassment that every working woman is subject to, at one time or another. But this is worse. Much, much worse. There are thirty women, and more than three times the number of men: men who take EVERY chance they get to remind the women that they don’t belong there. Sometimes it is sexual innuendo, and large unmentionable objects in their lunch box, or lockers. Sometimes it is assault and being locked up in the mobile toilets. Mobile toilets that don’t have plumbing. You can imagine the rest.
Josey looks for redressal and complains about the assaults , and is hounded again. And again. She finally goes to court…but no one, including the women who are subject to this kind of treatment every day, is willing to back up her claims. It is just her against the might of the mining company, and its money and muscle power.
And finally, the unexpected happens. Josey gets help from a quarter she never expected to get it from.
I liked the movie for the superlative acting, the plot and the characterization. But I liked it most of all for the accurate portrayal of the sense of helplessness women feel when they are subject to this kind of treatment at the workplace.
Josey Aimes is every woman: she is you and me. She is all of us.
‘North Country’ is powerful: a punch in the gut.
Watch it for the way real wonder women work. Watch it for the sisterhood of women who were strangers, coming together for a common cause.
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