Very disappointed :(

Don't listen to the negative reviews

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

FAR NORTH is one of those simple little under-the-radar movies that you never heard about until it turns up in the middle of the night and you gradually become enthralled watching it. With no buzz, publicity, or plot spoilers, I had no idea what to expect when I sat down to watch this, and I was pleasantly surprised by a film that confounded all of my expectations. The film is almost like a fairy tale in its simplicity: a mother-and-daughter team, living alone in the icy Siberian wastes, are joined by a soldier gone A.W.O.L. The film is about what happens next: how the power shifts and inevitable romance affects each character, and three people in such an isolated setting can never really work.Visually, the film is stunning. The inhospitable climate is a personality all in itself and the harshness of the landscape is captured in stunning detail – no more so than in the shocking opening sequence. There isn't a great deal of dialogue, but what we do get is natural and realistic. Key flashbacks add to the viewer's understanding and the film finishes on a shocking twist. Best of all is the acting: three actors giving excellent, against the grain performances.Michelle Krusiec is the young unknown, holding her own against two experienced hands. Sean Bean is a gentle and romantic man, giving a more touching performance than we usually see. Michelle Yeoh is the older woman, an outsider struggling to come to terms with the meaning of her life. Out of all three, it's Yeoh who gives the most stunning performance; she's totally cast against type (usually playing a kick-ass kung fu heroine) and she gets her character across wonderfully. What a revelation!

I started watching this movie on a lark, really; I saw what looked like Sean Bean on the poster but without his name listed on the display, and was simply curious to see if it was actually him. I'm terribly glad that I did.The movie is simply beautiful; fantastically shot and with very effective use of sound, long swaths of icy water creaking and crackling in transition from scene to scene in perfect marriage with the mood of the film. The performances are stellar all around, and the arc and the pace of the story are such that the ending will catch you entirely off-guard, thinking there must be at least another half-hour or so of resolution prior to the lead's brutal decision.The criticisms I see of this film are odd ones. First off that the time-period, which is intentionally left quite ambiguous but is also clearly relatively modern, doesn't lend itself to the nature of the story. That couldn't be more wrong to my mind, as it was important to convey that these two women are living 'out of time', made into things of myth by the cruel label of their culture and their self-imposed isolation... people who don't really 'belong' in any age, past or future.The other criticism I see is that the character's final actions are unbelievable, as Saiva seemed too good a person, and 'her only possible motivation could be sexual jealousy', which is inadequate. This, too, is just plain wrong, and rooted in two assumptions: the first being that we got to know Saiva well, which we most certainly didn't. We know she was banished, we know she had a husband who was brutally murdered, we know she was raped, we know she found a baby, we know she killed several men. That is -all- we know about her. What we infer about who she is/how she feels from that is just supposition, clearly incorrect in most cases. The second assumption is that sexual jealousy was the only motivation. This is hugely incorrect. Loneliness was the motivation; the crushing isolation she had faced before and faced again now that her 'daughter' and Loki were leaving. She was jealous yes, supremely so, but it wasn't just sexual jealousy. Her envy was of a loving life; a life in which she could love and be loved, something she only got the very briefest taste of when she married, only for her new family to be slaughtered before it could bear fruit. She wanted to be Anja, young and uncursed, with a future and a man and children of her own. She could have accepted being a third wheel, the older 'concubine', and was trying once Anja and Loki started making love unabashedly to squeeze her way into that role. When it turned out to be in vain, and Anja and Loki decided to abandon her, it clearly pushed her over the edge she'd probably been walking all of her life. She didn't make that grisly disguise for the sake of simple lust and brutal womanly rivalry, it was psychotic episode; the straw that broke the camel's back in a long life of horror and crushing loneliness, and tossed her to the teeth of a madness that had probably been circling her all of her days.

HUGE SPOILER IN THIS REVIEW. But, you would surely be better off for reading it.Other reviews have covered most of the general aspects, but, to avoid a HUGE spoiler, have seemingly soft pedaled on the ending.Perhaps the story on which this movie is supposed to be based is to blame, but while much of the movie is reasonably classily made, the ending is TOO stupid and ridiculous for words. Such an ending does NOT deserve such good story telling capability in the movie crew or the acting talents of the actors. How stupid do the film makers expect the viewers to be to accept that the protagonist can kill some one, skin their face and wear it as a mask to pass off as the victim and worse expect further stupidity in believing that the murderer can, with such, skinned mask, get intimate with the victim's lover who will get on full gusto with the intimacy with NO clue for several movie minutes!!!Full fault on the director for choosing to film this story bereft of sanity or even plausibility.

Something I set to record more on the basis of its setting than anything else, Far North is something of which I'd never heard, nor indeed would have by anything other than chance. Chance was in my favour however, thrusting me and this little production together.Saiva and Anja are two women, the former the adoptive mother of the latter, living an isolated life away from the community from which they originally came, Saiva alleged at birth by a shaman to be cursed. Their lives are interrupted when a wounded soldier stumbles into their camp, affecting the routine of their days.The tundra-central setting—the primary motivation for my opting to devote recording space to this film—is the first thing about Far North to attract our attention. The vast whiteness of this unoccupied land is explored beautifully through the usage of wide angle lenses, a sweeping opening shot, and the sole spot of blackness that is the yurt of our protagonist duo. Theirs is a quiet relationship, the intimacy they share communicated through the slightest of gestures rather than expository dialogue. The film is impressively silent, much of its running time featuring no sounds other than the constant bitter wind which pervades the soundtrack. The combination of image and sound in the film is meditative, such beautiful images as the Aurora Borealis, the great snowy mountains, and the rolling hills so covered in impenetrable whiteness that it is hard not to be lost in their banal perfection entirely unforgettable. Largely a three-hander, the film's performances are the tent-poles which support it, the particularly commendable quietness of Michelle Yeoh lending a dignified tragedy to her character. The relationships form the film's centrepiece, the evolution of these over the course of the narrative compelling and unpredictable. Twist is an inaccurate word to apply to a film of this sort, but it stores a number of surprises up its sleeve, the particular paths taken towards its denouement rather unconventional and, often, shocking. It is an emotional film, structured masterfully around these three characters and reinforced fantastically with splendid cinematography. The cold whites and blues of the arctic are contrasted wonderfully with the warm yellows and oranges of Saiva's flashback to times when she was with her community: when she had love, friendship, and hope. It is difficult not to be saddened by the melancholy the film presents, punctuated though it is by moments of silent beauty.An entrancing spectacle, Far North offers the very best of the fine combination one can craft with cinematography and setting. Expressing itself slowly and almost silently, it is a film that relies on artistic expression rather than speech; on the strength of its performances rather than action. Added to unquestionably by its wonderful score, it is a highpoint of modern independent cinema.