Everyone knows that basing your movie on a true story of social injustice is a surefire way to win Oscars. Much of the time, this leads to manipulative, overwrought filmmaking that is in its own fashion as predictable and constrained by genre conventions as any horror movie or romantic comedy. North Country is, in many ways, paint-by-numbers storytelling, following a true tale whose outcome you know from the minute the movie starts. Director Niki Caro and screenwriter Michael Seitzman invest their predictable plot with some intriguing detours and an admirable integrity, though, and that makes the film watchable and engrossing, even when it does exactly what you expect it to do.
It helps, too, that they've packed their cast with Oscar winners, starting with Charlize Theron as Josey Aimes, a single mother of two who moves back to her Northern Minnesota hometown after leaving her abusive husband. At the urging of old friend Glory (Frances McDormand), Josey takes a job at the local mine, which has only recently started hiring women thanks to anti-discrimination laws (the film takes place in 1989). As one of only a handful of female employees, Josey is subject to extreme sexual harassment, including groping, abusive language, taunting and near-rape. Her female co-workers endure the same sort of abuse, but accept it as part of the price of working in the mine and making union wages.
Josey, however, is not willing to suffer the abuse silently, and she complains first to her supervisor and then to the president of the company, both of whom dismiss her concerns. Eventually she enlists former local hockey star Bill White (Woody Harrelson), a lawyer who's just returned from living in New York, to represent her in a lawsuit that went on to become the first sexual harassment class-action suit in U.S. history.
Caro and Seitzman, working from a book about the case, fictionalize the story heavily while maintaining a gritty realism that goes a long way toward alleviating some of the predictability. Although the progression of the case follows an easy-to-spot straight line, the personal details of Josey's life, including the way she interacts with her miner father (Richard Jenkins) who resents her at his workplace, and her teenage son, are richer and more complex. Caro wisely keeps the focus on the case and the toll it takes on Josey, not distracting from the message with extraneous romantic subplots or other similar conventions that often mar Hollywood retellings of true events.
Theron proves her Oscar win for Monster wasn't a fluke, and thankfully doesn't angle for another by overplaying Josey. She gives a quiet and powerful performance, but it's McDormand as the hardened mine veteran who's the standout performer in the film. Jenkins and Sissy Spacek shine in smaller roles as Josey's parents, and Sean Bean, with his questionable American accent, is the only weak link in the stellar cast.
Caro's last film, Whale Rider, also examined the tough road for a woman in a male-dominated position, and the way that tradition bucks up against encroaching modernity. She clearly understands the struggles of women in overwhelmingly male environments (as does any female director in Hollywood), and handles Josey's story with sensitivity and tact. She also knows how to immerse herself in her subject, and just as Whale Rider evoked the Maori culture to great effect, so does North Country represent Minnesota's Iron Range in all of its ugliness and glory. Cinematographer Chris Menges makes the bleak countryside look beautiful and strangely inviting in its harshness, creating a real sense of the isolation and insularity of the northern mining community.
The film spends so much time building up to the case that the outcome is glossed over and the ending sadly anticlimactic, but since you know what's coming it's not too much of a disappointment. There is little to be said here about sexual harassment that's new, since this is a clear case without much in the way of nuance. Despite Caro's best efforts, at times the film feels as if it's little more than a walk through newspaper reports, but even at those times, it's a well-constructed walk.