Where do the angels live? One day you will hear the story of the eternal city that no longer exists. One day you will see a huge ark that cannot swim. Without the loud chimneys of the Apocalypse, business people in strict suits will come and order your homeland to be flooded just to build a hydroelectric power plant. And then you will remember that, according to legend, angels wandered in the valley of the Northfork River instead of bison, and the ancient Celts chose a snow-white swan as an intermediary between the gods and people. But what if your feathers are the most duck feathers and the pastor, who used to find them behind your ear, made Bible bookmarks out of them? What if you are desperately looking for your own, and a beautiful pack has rejected you, doubting your true birthright? Then patiently wait, hope, fervently believe in the miracle, which is called quite simply: parents.
In 2002, the Polishie brothers duo, who made a name for themselves on the films “Twins from Idaho” and “Jackpot”, began, contrary to mainstream investor expectations, to non-profit project “Northfork”. In the process, funding for the film stopped, and the twins were forced to mortgage their real estate in order to pay the salaries of the film crew (by the way, among the actors – all celebrities). Why the story of the flooded town of Montana in 1955 was so dear to Californian filmmakers, you can understand by looking at their family tree: ancestors on the paternal side were immigrants from this state, Polishia’s grandfather built a dam. So, magical realism on the screen is a tribute to the ancestral memory, a lovingly assembled family album.
The “City of the Doomed” motif becomes the starting point for the filmmakers in thinking about God, about life and death, about their native land, metaphorically embodied in a dying child abandoned by foster parents, but passionately dreaming of finding a real family (angels in the twelfth generation). Somewhere there was a story about an old sad man with huge wings, but here the wings still need to be returned. The drama, presented in biblical proportions, suddenly balances all participants. And the sad squad of forced tow trucks are not back-turned characters from Magritte’s canvases, as it seems at first. They're angels too. Angels of Limba, hardly convincing obstinate residents to leave their native places, but at the same time they do not believe in the reasonableness of what is happening. And the fantasy guests of the otherworldly reality - the Cup of tea, the Hercules flower, the mute Cod and the Happy, like ridiculous comedians from the crossroads of eras, in Victorian and cowboy costumes - subtle entities, however, seeking the truth in magical books is not at all orthodox. There is some piercing truth in the fact that happiness is blind and handless, and the flower of unconditional love is a mysterious androgynous, because a beautiful fairy tale always lives in a child’s heart. But there is suffering. Even outside the hidden opposition of Christian and pagan questions of faith are raised quite acutely: where are the words without which the crucifixion is only “a man nailed to two boards,” where is the justification of God allowing the suffering of an innocent child, where is the land that “does not stand without the righteous”?
The parable basis of the script makes it possible to feel the tender, disembodied canvas of the film, when there is so much space that you suffocate from the air of an endless, pre-thunderous desert, you run all day, and in the frame - only a phantasmagorical dog, a thin-legged creation of the medieval Dali. However, the freedom can turn into a cramped shelter bed, in which little Irvine raves. The plot breaks down into many false novels, anecdotes, urban stories (photo album). The asphalt gray of state buildings, the scant beige of barren land, the blurred cobalt of the Rocky Mountains - Northfork is embodied in the muffled tones of vintage slides. At the same time, the visual generosity of the operator grisaille is achieved by the impeccable beauty of forms, whether it is a landscape, a baroque suit or deer horns. Editing interruptions place accents, breaking the nap of the frame with the sounds of breaking glass and moving the narrative to different levels of sleep and reality. Drowning in meditative slowness, the picture looks in one breath, provided that the patient, astute viewer really wants to open the box, look into it, find the next, smaller, then another ... and continue the painstaking search for a hidden gift to the serene country music of the 50s.
The film, ending the Polishi trilogy about provincial America, about the mysterious American dream, is surreal ingenuity reminiscent of the films of the Coen brothers, Terry Gilliam, Jim Jarmusch. There is in it an elusive bitter scent, a hypnotic scent of death, which is nothing but nostalgia and grateful relief, because by putting snow-white plumage in a suitcase, one can experience the power of the earthly attraction of sorrow, and then soar into the sky: "For we are all angels, only to which we apply our wings divide us."