Review of The Northerners

Great film, yes, humorous and clever. I spent a few months in Holland and saw the great contrasts between liberal Amsterdam and the almost Aamish conservatism of the countryside and its small villages. This film is an indictment of the religious puritanism and hypocrisy of the ' blind' , represented by the manic huntsman. It's rare to wish to see another human being blinded but here it feels like a much-awaited catharsis and it says something great about a Director who can make such extreme violence part of what the viewer himself feels is justified. Unlike Von Trier, who's violence disgusts and seems arbitrary and just stemming from his own mental illness, this Director here is fully in control of himself and his vision ( basically humane). For me the most irritating person is not the butcher, because while he is meant to seem animalist and piggish, his 'frustration' can be understood and is human. I don't really understand what his wife is meant to represent, and the prayer scenes outside their house, except to show religious extremism as hypocritical, inhuman and destructive of healthy love. It seems that only the boy, the dead girl, the black boy and the postmen are the only human beings worthy of that name in the village.

Bleak, funny yes, but very dark. Ultimately , DEPRESSING. Doesn't make me want to live in Holland. In fact, this seems like a film made by a Director very unhappy with the State of his own country, and very alienated. It is the humour of desperation and the end of the film is messy and offers no hope. The postman returns, meets the boy , and so what? What then? Back to a "happy life" in that village from Hell?

In the Dutch Dogville?

I don't think so.