North Country

While we’ve all read countless stories about mistreatment, terrible conditions, and sexual harassment, North Country brings an actual story to life in a way that hits you in the gut. Workplace abuse is even more dire for women in male-dominated workplaces, as the film powerfully illustrates. The degradation, humiliation, and physical abuse women endured in an iron mine in Minnesota in the 70s and 80s is appalling, bordering on barbaric.

Charlize Theron plays miner Josie Aimes, a character inspired by a real person named Lois Jenson. Jenson, a struggling single mom from Iron Range, Minnesota. An unwitting pioneer, her case set a legal precedent that improved working conditions for women across the country.

Theron, despite the grime and dirt, never quite looks the part of a miner. Yet she brings nuance and humanity to Josie, combining vulnerability, courage, grit, and depth to the character.

Josie is up against her abusive co-worker and ex-boyfriend, Bobby (played by a young Jeremy Renner), an infuriating character with whom she shares a dark past. Unfortunately, Josie’s case is not uncommon. In this unforgiving workplace, women miners are constantly subjected to sexual, physical, and emotional abuse by their male co-workers.

On her side is Glory (a no-nonsense Frances McDormand), the only woman union representative, who’s barely hanging on as she finds a way to negotiate fair demands for her fellow female co-workers without confrontation while dealing with a terminal illness.

There’s also a hero ex-football player turned reluctant lawyer (played by Woody Harrellson), who takes the landmark case.

Sissy Spacek (Alice Aimes) provides a convincing portrayal of a torn yet dutiful mother. She cares for Josie but has an old-fashioned notion of where a woman’s place should be. Richard Jenkins is compelling as Hank Aimes, a father whose love for her daughter is overshadowed by her poor life choices and his belief that women don’t belong in the mines.

While the courtroom drama can be formulaic and inaccurate — it gravitates towards dramatization versus by the book courtroom protocol — North Country is ultimately gripping and rewarding, a film about a triumphant struggle for justice in a town where even the good people are reluctant to fight for it.