In the postmodern age where sexual harassment seminars are mandatory for most employees, a film like “North Country” might seem redundant. However, “Whale Rider” director Niki Caro’s latest, based on true events about single mother Josey Aimes (Charlize Theron) — who won one of the first class-action sexual harassment lawsuits in American history — changes any misconception that sexual harassment against women was ever a benign problem in the workplace. Theron plays her second down-and-out, working-class woman following her Academy Award-winning portrayal of serial killer Aileen Woernos in “Monster.”
The film opens with Aimes left bruised and bloodied from a violent encounter with her deadbeat husband: This sums up her character throughout the film, roughed-up but not beaten. Aimes decides to leave her husband and return to her hometown to live with her parents in rural Minnesota. She fails to find solace in an unsupportive father (Richard Jenkins of “Six Feet Under”) and passive mother (Sissy Spacek) and struggles to find a decent-paying job to support her two children. So on the recommendation of long-time friend (played by the always-brilliant Frances McDormand), one of the town’s few female miners, Aimes decides to work at the iron mine — it’s the highest-paying job for a woman with little education. Caro illustrates that the mine is the life support of the town’s inhabitants — including Aimes’ father, who reacts to his daughter’s newfound career by accusing her of being a lesbian.
But Aimes discovers that her father is not the only one who discourages women from seeking employment in the iron-mining industry, where female miners are tormented and degraded on a daily basis. Caro redefines the meaning of sexual harassment by showing that the women miners were not even treated like human beings. There are many powerful scenes in which male co-workers harass Aimes and the other females with obscene acts that range from sexually explicit graffiti and insults to physical assaults. Caro is successful in graphically showing the harassment, but she handles the material in a respectful manner. Unlike other films in the past that have dealt with similar subjects, such as “The Accused” and “Boys Don’t Cry,” she never goes as far as portraying women as indefensible victims. From the onset, Aimes is always fighting back for herself and the other females who work in the mine.
Inspired by watching the Anita Hill testimony, Aimes decides to take her employer to court even though her lawyer (Woody Harrelson) warns her that the mine owners will use the “nuts or sluts” defense: either she was nuts and imagined the harassment, or she was a slut who couldn’t stop sleeping with her married co-workers.
After her last project, Caro has not shied away from making films with a feminist message. She eerily gives us a glimpse of a time, less than 20 years ago, when for many women, having to face horrendous abuse from their male counterparts was all in a day’s work.
