Back in the late 60's I attended a college in Superior, Wisconsin. I was from Philadelphia, Pa and had never experienced the cold and long winters near the small city of Duluth, MN. I met hard drinking people there (there's nothing else to do), blond as Jessica Lange with Scandinavian or Polish accents, many of them. There were good people and bad. The men worked the port ships or the railroad yards. The blizzards were like nothing I have ever seen.
Charles Durning gets a fat man's star turn. Dunning has been thrown by his farm horse and wants the animal shot by his daughter, Jessica Lange. She protests, but agrees to shoot the animal. She's back from the Twin Cities where she works as a professional woman with one in the oven. The old man is in the hospital with wild delusions about the horse, his Alzheimer wife, and life on the farm and it's bitter cold. The drunken Uncle sidekick doesn't help either. Also, there's the younger daughter, unmarried with a teen daughter. The teen, blond as her sisters, is soon to get it on with as many young hockey players as possible.
This is Sam Sheppard's first directorial film with plenty of farce, which gets heavy handed, so the viewer never really gets a grip on the emotional lives of these crazy folks. Maybe that's it. Their lives by Lake Superior are so harsh, they cannot communicate a sensible thought. Nevertheless, Far North is a snapshot of an out of the way, beautiful place that will interest the curious.
