An cheap way to create interest in a film is to take a story, chop it up into pieces, and dole them out randomly to build audience curiosity. The result is an audience which is intrigued, not by the story but, by the sham which begs the question: What is this flick about? And so begins "Northfork", a fable about the dialectic of progress and the inevitability of death. In their quest to be different in their own weird way, the Polish brothers went too far in the direction of the bleak, the starkly austere, and the minimalistic in "Northfork". The stoicism of their previous hit indie "Twin Falls Idaho" only worked because it was offset by a human story which provided the substance for empathetic entertainment. In "Northfork" the human story is surreal, beyond believability, and unsatisfying with actors looking more like actors than characters. Without a satisfying human story, "Northfork" is just so much weirdness which must be relegated to the art house and an existence as a peculiarity among films. Only for artie lovers and those into films which are different for the sake of being different. (B-)
