Back in 1996, Modest Mouse, an indie rock band, released an album with a title that pretty much explains its purpose. ‘This Is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About’ does exactly what it says it would. It features someone rambling on and on about the ennui and existential dilemmas ingrained in our modern lives. Despite being presented like a bunch of musical styles put on a platter for us to relish, paired with occasional growls, squeaks, and passionate shrieks, it feels like a warm and comforting blanket. Somehow, the band captures the wistful feeling we associate with a long drive while giving us just enough stimulus to keep our minds occupied when we have nothing to think about.
Bart Schrijver’s recent film, ‘The North,’ evokes a similar emotion while following two old friends going on a long walk and fighting the kind of internal battles that are ingrained in modern life. Initially, it seems like one of those inspirational films from the 2000s that beckon us to go back to nature and experience true freedom. That’s probably because Schrijver also includes a frame with a disclaimer, telling us to distance ourselves from our technological devices during the journey to be able to cherish it. That feels almost like an anti-tech advertorial, a paradox in line with the recent interest of overstimulated younger generations to abandon technology and go analog.
Yet, that’s only a way for ‘The North’ to lure us in. The film feels less like ‘Into the Wild’ and more like ‘Old Joy,’ the Kelly Reichardt film that follows two old friends reuniting on a camping trip. Schrijver’s film, which looks stunning and feels calming, is a similar meditation on old wounds and the male psyche. It happens when they are placed in a situation where all they have is each other and the thoughts that they might shove under the rug otherwise. So, in the absence of their usual stimuli, they are drawn to the emotional pains buried deep within themselves.
Chris (Bart Harder) and Lluis (Carles Pulido), the two men, confront those wounds after meeting each other after a long time. They were best friends and roommates who lost touch and grew apart. During that time, Chris became a family man with a corporate job while Lluis pursued his creative ambitions, making a life with his artistic skills. Years later, they reunite as men in their mid-30s with different personal and professional aspirations. It affects what they seek from their reunion, where they plan to go on a hike through about a 600-kilometre stretch of the Scottish Highlands.
Chris, introduced as a man burdened with endless professional obligations, approaches the trip differently than Lluis, whose personal life initially remains a mystery. Despite introducing Lluis as a guarded individual, Schrijver ensures we understand what Chris’ friendship means to him. It’s through those hints that we start realizing his profound investment in this trip. Through his arc, the script explores the fears of being left behind and being vulnerable, while through Chris’s arc, it primarily analyzes the state of work-life balance in precarious modern workplaces.
It’s a fairly familiar premise that was frequently rehashed in Hollywood the past two decades after ‘Office Space’ famously satirized the exhausting corporate world, or ‘Falling Down’ explored it through the resulting psychological explosion. The film doesn’t push the envelope in that regard, nor does it offer a novel insight into the relationship between humans and nature. Some of its dialogues, if judged purely on the script level, are platitudes about dissatisfaction in modern lives.
Yet, they all work exceptionally well and feel organic in the film because Schrijver presents them without rushing through the moments they appear in. The deliberate pace allows these moments to breathe and linger, leaving us with a sense of catharsis that the characters feel. With a runtime of over two hours, ‘The North’ could have been a slog, but it’s anything but that.
The credit partially goes to the innately beautiful landscapes that lend their beauty to the film’s charm, but it would have been emotionally inert without Twan Peeters’ contribution as a cinematographer. In a script ripe with psychologically dense moments, he ensures that such moments feel just as immersive as the ones that involve characters merely soaking in the beauty of nature stripped of the signs of industrialization.
The film excels in its most heartbreaking moments, capturing the weight of the characters’ anguish through wordless communication. In essence, it’s a film about two men struggling to communicate, stemming from dated ideas or misconceptions about each other. So, the silences lend themselves to the directorial approach, making its pivotal moments leave the desired impact. Although not as perceptive as some other projects in its lane, it’s still a keenly observed portrait of the male psyche that presents their anxieties and emotional distance without being judgmental or reductive. It presents them as humans as flawed as anyone, learning to grow out of their broken selves.
In retrospect, I think the transformative journey of their mutual healing would have seemed cloying or faux-motivational. Yet, Schrijver manages to make the very moments that could have run at that risk, unsentimental and profoundly moving. Maybe that’s because he understands these spaces so well and had a similar experience himself, considering his genuine investment in hiking as expressed in the film’s press notes. Through his perspective, the exhaustion, frustration, or satisfaction doesn’t feel phoned in. So, despite its familiar themes, the film works as well as it does because it feels much more grounded than similar riffs on introspection catalyzed by nature.
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