Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a sucker for snowbound films. Anything from Fargo to The Thing, heck, even Snowbeast… there’s something about the contrast between the vast arctic blankness and the comparative insignificance of the characters that resounds. It’s the same with deserts, of course, which have a similar unity of form.
Far North (2007), directed by Asif Kapadia, is another in the recent slew of Arctic films (see also Whiteout, 20 Days of Night, The Grey etc etc), and it’s one of the strangest. A woman and her daughter (Michele Yeoh and Michelle Krusiec) live in complete isolation, shunned by the locals – who consider her to be a witch – and constantly on the run from a nameless, genocidal army. Then a stranger (Sean Bean) turns up, near death, and they both fall for him. Things do not end well; in fact they end very, very badly.
The is a slow moving, arty drama which then quite unexpectedly features one of the most unpleasant, graphic and disturbing endings I’ve seen in recent years; a transition in mood which makes it something like a cross between An Essential Killing and Red, White and Blue. It’s all highly allegorical, beautifully shot and has a distinct mood to it; but given its very oddness and the slack pacing its not surprising to see why it failed to find an audience. Kapadia directed The Warrior back in 2001 and this is his last film to date.
