I had high expectations for this movie. As a longtime fan of Garrison Keillor, particularly his radio monologues and his humorous books Happy to Be Here and Lake Wobegon Days, I was disappointed by the movie version of A Prairie Home Companion. Directed by Robert Altman and written by Keillor, the film has talent behind it, a pleasantly sentimental streak, and some nice moments, but it doesn’t quite fly. Read the rest of this entry »

North Country is a moving and memorable film about a grim subject: workplace sexual harassment. Set on the Iron Range of northern Minnesota, it stars Charlize Theron as Josey Aimes, a woman who takes a job at a taconite (iron ore) mine. After the men cruelly harass her and the other women at the mine, she leads her fellow female employees in a class-action lawsuit against their employer. Mining provides a large portion of their town’s employment, and no one is eager to take on the company. Bill White, a local lawyer and former hockey star, played by Woody Harrelson, reluctantly agrees to take the case.

Written by Michael Seitzman and directed by Niki Caro—who previously directed Whale Rider, the New Zealand film about another combative female—North Country is a tense film that shuttles back and fourth between several plot strands: the sexual harassment court trial, events at the mine and at Josey’s home, and Josey’s adolescence. The latter subplot is the weakest element of the film, and it leads to some heavy-handed melodrama when it comes into play in the courtroom. The film nevertheless rises above these weaknesses and manages to tell a compelling story.

Highlights of the film include the speech by Josey’s father to his union brothers, in which he belatedly heaps shame upon the men for their treatment of his daughter, and a courtroom speech by lawyer Bill White, in which he makes some trenchant points about power. Frances McDormand—returning to the role of a strong northern Minnesota woman, last played in Fargo—does a fine turn as a fellow employee and union leader. Sean Bean also has an excellent performance as her husband. His basement conversations with Josey’s son provide some of the movie’s better scenes. Josey’s boss, Arlen Pavich (Xander Berkeley), has an appropriately Slavic sounding last name for the Iron Range, and his appearance and speech come across as more authentic than those of the other actors.

As a representation of the region, the film does its job ably. It downplays local accents, which aren’t as broad as in the Coen brothers’ Fargo, for example, and it plays up the winter setting. It seems to be always winter in this film’s exterior shots—except for the outdoor mining scenes, which were filmed in New Mexico and lack snow and cold air. There are plenty of fine shots of the north woods and Iron Range towns. Bob Dylan fans will gain extra satisfaction from the film’s soundtrack, which features several songs by the Iron Range native.

The story is loosely based on the book Class Action: The Story of Lois Jensen and the Landmark Case That Changed Sexual Harassment Law (2002), by Clara Bingham and Laura Leedy Gansler. The book concerned the women workers at the Eveleth Taconite Company in the late 1970s and 1980s. Those women initiated the first class-action sexual harassment lawsuit in the nation’s history.

North Country isn’t an easy film to watch, given its focus on women’s humiliation at the hands of men, but it’s a rewarding one. As a result of its strengths—vivid characters, memorable dialogue, and beautiful cinematography—it’s destined to become a lasting part of the Upper Midwest’s cinematic history.

Filming starts today in St. Paul on Robert Altman and Garrison Keillor’s new movie, “Prairie Home Companion.” Based of course on Keillor’s long-running radio show, the screenplay is by Keillor, with Altman directing. It’s not a documentary; rather, it’s the fictional story about a day in the life of a “Prairie Home”-like radio show whose staff has just learned they are making their last broadcast.

It will star, in addition to Keillor, Meryl Streep, Woody Harrelson, Lily Tomlin, John C. Reilly, Lindsay Lohan, Kevin Kline, Virginia Madsen, and Maya Rudolph. “Prairie Home Companion” listeners will also be happy to hear that radio show regulars Tim Russell, Sue Scott, and Tom Keith will also appear in the film, as will the show’s band. The movie will be shot at the Fitzgerald Theater, home of the real “Prairie Home Companion” and named, thanks to Keillor, after St. Paul’s F. Scott Fitzgerald.

It’s the biggest movie event in Minnesota since the Coen brothers filmed “Fargo” here. Filming will occur over a short 25-day period. See the Star Tribune article for more.

Last week I began a discussion of the 1996 Coen brothers’ film Fargo. This week I conclude my commentary on the film.
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The script of Fargo is especially adept at capturing aspects of regional speech. The characters utter their “yahs”; drop the g from “ing” endings; frequently say “you bet” and “you betcha”; and take on many other aspects of the dialect. The actors have clearly been coached in the regional accent, but the accents often seem overdone to my ear. Jean Lundegaard’s is probably the most exaggerated. Although I’ve heard very strong regional accents, especially in rural areas, I haven’t heard one quite like hers. The accent that seemed most authentic to me is heard from the man being interviewed in his driveway by one of Marge’s fellow police officers. He is the bartender near Moose Lake who talks about encountering Showalter (Steve Buscemi), providing the information that eventually leads Marge to the killers’ cabin.

The Coens subvert another Midwestern myth in the film when Grimsrud kills Showalter at the cabin. He does so in Paul Bunyan fashion–with an axe. The tool that cleared the Upper Midwestern frontier, a symbol of regional industriousness, becomes a murder weapon. Then, in the most (regrettably) unforgettable scene of the film, a modern woodsman’s tool, the wood chipper, is used to dispose of the body. As Marge Gunderson approaches Grimsrud with her pistol drawn, he is reddening the pure white snow of the northern woods.

As we watch the awful body-chipping scene, we do not know who is in the wood chipper. I assumed it was Jean Lundegaard, but we learn later it is Carl Showalter. If the clean snow of the winter woods can be said to symbolize the region’s own estimation of its moral purity, then the Coens leave no doubt about their own very different estimation of that purity. It does not exist, they tell us; the Upper Midwest is no different from any other region. It has violence and mayhem and stupidity, just like any other place.

Or are people stupider here, as the film perhaps implies? With the exception of the Marge Gunderson and Wade Gustafson, Fargo represents the locals as overly earnest, slow-witted yokels. Think of the two hookers and Marge’s police department colleagues.
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On the lighter side, at least two Coen brothers’ films mention gophers, the University of Minnesota mascot (the Golden Gophers) and source of one of the state’s nicknames (the Gopher State). In Fargo, Wade Gustafson, Jerry’s father-in-law, is watching a Gopher hockey game early in the film. In O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the main characters roast and eat gophers on a stick. This latter symbolism–could it have been unintentional?–was not lost on me, a U of M alumnus, though I have never heard anyone else mention it. The Coen brothers’ father, Ed Coen, was a professor in the highly respected economics department at the University of Minnesota. He once substitute taught in one of my economics classes.

Yes, I realize the gopher is an inherently funny mascot. Having a diminutive rodent for your mascot is funny. When you grow up here, though, you don’t think twice about it. And when you see pictures of Goldie the Gopher in his uniform and looking pretty athletic, he looks, well, almost fierce.
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In looking at the version of the screenplay that I found on the Internet, I noticed that it diverges from the movie slightly. For example, the script has an early scene in which Jerry checks into a hotel, but it’s not in the film. In another scene, the script has Wade Gustafson telling Jerry that he is watching the “Norstars” on television. In the film, however, it’s the Gophers, and they’re playing their archrivals, the Wisconsin Badgers.
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For a Fargo native’s view of the movie, see a Washington Post column by the talented James Lileks. For the most part, I agree with him.
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I have a few tangential connections to Fargo. I was in Minnesota the year that it was made (1995?) and tried to become an extra for the film. The casting call had asked that we come dressed in 1980s clothing, and they took pictures of the many people there. I must not have looked Midwestern enough, because I was not chosen.

The film has many fun local details, and I won’t attempt to go into them here. However, one in particular caught my attention. It was the name of the bar near Moose Lake in which, we are told, Carl Showalter asks the bartender where he can find some action. It’s called “Ecklund and Swedlin’s” (spelling taken from a screenplay found on the Internet). Ecklund and Swedlund are home builders in Minnesota. (Only in Minnesota or Sweden would you get a company name like that.) In fact, they built the Plymouth home that I spent most of my childhood years in.

It was nearly ten years ago that Joel and Ethan Coen’s film Fargo was released. Because no other movie–and perhaps no other cultural production–has so defined the region in the public consciousness, this 1996 film seems a necessary topic for this column. I recently watched the film again, and what follows are some thoughts on it.
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The great movie of the Upper Midwest has yet to be made. The Coen brothers come close with Fargo, but to my mind the film falls short. The film has beautiful and powerful images of the landscape in winter; generally accurate (though exaggerated) renderings of regional mannerisms, attitudes, and accents; a taut contrast of domestic bliss and domestic nightmare in two of its storylines; strong performances by its actors; and a wealth of regionally specific details that are the product of the filmmakers’ origins in the region. And yet with all this, as I watched the film for the second time nine years after the first viewing, I’m left with a feeling of emptiness that is not aesthetically pleasing. Perhaps that is the Coens’ point, but it seems a meanspirited point to make, especially as it is made largely with the violent deaths of innocent people.

The film seems powerful but nearly heartless. As I watched it again, I often felt as if I was going through a masochistic ritual without being a masochist; there was no pleasure in the painful moments. Was it because I knew the characters’ fates? I can think of other violent films that hold up in multiple viewings. Is it because the characters in those films are fascinating? The main character of this film is not so much fascinating as repulsive. Jerry Lundegaard is inept, corrupt, and craven, and his family pays the price for his sins.

The film punctures the myths of Upper Midwestern virtue and politeness (”Minnesota Nice”) and Lake Wobegon’s homespun simplicity. This is a region that prides itself on higher than average rates of church attendance, voter turnout, corporate philanthropy, and high school graduation. It’s a place of reserved manners and clean government. It’s a place ripe for artistic deflation and undercutting.

Most of the main characters bear the kind of Scandinavian surnames that are common in the region: Jerry Lundegaard and his family undergo the film’s domestic nightmare as he arranges for his wife to be kidnapped; Wade Gustafson is the wealthy car dealer father in law; Marge Gunderson, the pregnant police officer, unravels the criminal schemes; Gaear Grimsrud is the most violent of the two low-life criminals. One exception to these Scandinavians is the Gustafson’s Jewish business partner, Stan Grossman.

Grimsrud’s name epitomizes the grim spirit of the film. Yet I would say the film goes even beyond grim. Relentlessly dispiriting would be a more accurate description.

The film attempts to use the happy domesticity of Marge Gunderson and her husband to counterbalance the downward spiral of violence and destruction in the Lundegaard-Gustafson and Showalter-Grimsrud storylines, but it doesn’t achieve this. The weight of the movie’s action and emotional impact is on the destruction of the Lundegaard domestic life, the victimization of the innocent Jean Lundegaard, and the murder of various other innocents by Showalter and Grimsrud.

Although this is not the great film of the Upper Midwest, it is nevertheless great in its depiction of winter. It uses the season and its scenery extremely well. Just think of some of the film’s images: Jerry’s car materializing out of the wintry weather at the beginning of the movie; shots of parking ramps and parking lots full of snow; Jerry manically scraping the ice off his windshield when he knows his scheme has failed; the endless snowy flatness of the land and the comic image of Carl Showalter planting his ice scraper as a marker for his loot.
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Was the film meant to lash back at the Minnesota culture the Coen brothers grew up in? They were born in the same town I was, St. Louis Park. The film reveals an intimate familiarity with the region, but it also seems to be the product of creators who feel outside that culture and perhaps even hostile toward it.

Why do I have such a negative reaction to the film this time around? Am I trying to preserve some mythic image of the region? Do I possess some regional sensibility that makes me resentful of it?

Next week: more on Fargo.

During our first visits to Northfield this summer I noticed an interesting sight in the windows of local houses: green Paul Wellstone campaign signs dating not from this fall’s election, but from elections two years ago and earlier. Like Wellstone himself, the signs are straightforward, enduring, and often emphatic. On a green background with white borders and lettering they read simply “Wellstone” or, more characteristically, “Wellstone!”

The signs are poignant, of course, because Paul Wellstone, the former Democratic United States senator from Minnesota, died in a plane crash on October 25, 2002. During his twelve years as a senator, Wellstone was a fiery and charismatic champion of progressive causes. At the time of the crash–which also claimed his wife, Sheila; his daughter, Marcia; and several staff members–he was running for a third term against former Democrat and mayor of St. Paul, Norm Coleman. His untimely death came just 10 days before the election, and Democrats hastily arranged for former Senator Walter Mondale to run in his place. Mondale lost to Coleman, and Republicans gained a valuable Senate seat.

This September St. Paul-based filmmakers Lu Lippold, Dan Luke, and Laurie Stern released Wellstone!, a feature-length documentary on the politician’s life and political career. The film has already been shown in a number of venues here in Minnesota and across the country. Local viewers can see it again at the Riverview Theater in Minneapolis, December 11 and 12, at 3 p.m.

I was fortunate enough to see the documentary here at Carleton College in Northfield, Wellstone’s hometown, on the second anniversary of Wellstone’s death. Several dozen people gathered in a Carleton lecture hall to see the movie and hear director Lu Lippold respond to questions. Many people shared their memories of the senator as well.

Wellstone first arrived at Carleton in 1969 at age 25. The film recounts how he and his wife Sheila, both from Virginia, came to Minnesota reluctantly, apprehensive about the winters. However, Wellstone quickly gained a following among his Carleton students. Just as quickly, he became controversial, leading students and community members in political movements and protests locally and across the state on issues such as labor conditions and rural power lines. It was in this context–leftist professor as rabble-rouser and inspiring leader of students–that I first heard of Wellstone in the mid-1980s from friends attending Carleton.

Only a few years later, in 1990, Wellstone gained the political limelight when he defeated the incumbent Republican U.S. Senator, Rudy Boschwitz. Wellstone had seemingly come out of nowhere to defeat an experienced and respected opponent. Both men had Jewish immigrant parents, but the similarities ended there. One was a short, idealistic professor and the other a tall, pragmatic businessman. The footage of Wellstone’s campaign–the commercials, the famous green campaign bus, and the two candidates debating on local public television–provides some of the most memorable images of Wellstone’s career.

The film goes on to closely follow Wellstone’s crucial votes and positions while in the Senate. He opposed the first Gulf War in 1991, and his speech on the subject seems eerily prescient when considered in the context of today’s problems in Iraq. He was the only senator up for reelection to oppose the welfare reform act and the 2002 vote authorizing the threat of war in Iraq. Wellstone had a progressive vision on energy policy that was ahead of its time–emphasizing conservation and renewables–and he was instrumental in preventing drilling for oil in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge. Clips of his speeches illustrate his significant power as an orator and give the film its most electrifying moments. The man’s conviction, charisma, and humor come through, and we are reminded of the enormity of our loss.

While deftly tracing Wellstone’s life, the film gives a clear sense of his fundamental kindness and his commitment to family through interviews with those who knew him. His devotion to Sheila stands out especially, including his support for her work on domestic violence issues. Wellstone! avoids hagiography, however, noting the politician’s failings and missteps. His senatorial career started out poorly, for example, as he attempted to make every cause a priority. Wellstone could admit mistakes as well, as when he later regretted his 1996 vote in favor of the Defense of Marriage Act, which denies federal recognition of same-sex marriages.

The film also treats the famous Wellstone memorial service, held just days before the 2002 election at the University of Minnesota’s Williams Arena and attended by politicians from both sides of the aisle. I watched it on C-SPAN while living in California and still remember it vividly. All went well until Wellstone staffer Rick Kahn took things over the top, forgetting the diverse composition of the audience. In a message and tone better suited for a partisan rally, and compromising his own dignity, Kahn began a series of shouted requests with the phrase, “I am begging you?!” He finally called on all present “to win this election for Paul Wellstone!” As Al Franken notes in the film, those who want to criticize Kahn should remember that he had just lost a close friend and colleague of many years, and composure is difficult to maintain at such a time.

Wellstone! is a fine treatment of a man who became a progressive icon in American politics. Wellstone fought for the poor, for minorities, for the disadvantaged, for people who do not have lobbyists in Washington. He saw himself as their candidate, and he never overlooked their causes. The documentary offers to those who remember him a chance to revisit those memories; to others it provides a chance to learn who he was. To me, Wellstone’s legacy is best summed up in this Wellstone quote from the film: “Politics is not about money and power games but the improvement of people’s lives.”

See the film’s web site for more information on its making, dates of future screenings, and options for purchasing a DVD version.