Jeanette In Class Assignment #3: Northfork

I hated this movie.
So.
Much.

It's basically a study in symbolism gone wrong, and it's also the first time I've ever thought that surrealism was just flat out obtuse. If they hadn't been trying to tell a story, it would have been different. If the movie hadn't had such a compelling premise, it could all have been about the visuals and the quirky characters and the strange animate wooden animal (which was, by the way, my favorite character). If it had been one long, grey vignette, fine.

But I thought the premise was extremely interesting, and so my hatred is proportioned according to my disappointment. Who wouldn't want to see a movie about the last few days of a town's existence? Who wouldn't want to explore the relationship between humans and their homes? And the idea of a stranded angel? Let's go. Let's do this story.

It fell flat, though, because the human, narrative aspect of the movie was almost nonexistent. Everything in the film was so symbolic that it almost couldn't function as symbol anymore. OH, COOL. Weird freakin' angels. One of them doesn't have hands? That's so symbolic.

Get it? He doesn't have hands?

One of them doesn't talk? That's also sooooooo symbolic.

There's a cross on the outhouse? Super symbol.

NO.

The fact is, if everything stands for something else, then what is happening isn't deepened, it is made insignificant. And I felt like that's what Northfork did: shot itself in the foot.

Symbols are only meaningful if they are surrounded by things that are usual, rooted. Ordinary.