NORTH COUNTRY PORTRAYS THE ROSA PARKS OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT
North Country, directed by Niki Caro, begins with titles that inform filmviewers that 1975 was the year when the first woman was hired in the coal mines of the Mesabi Iron Range, Minnesota, and that by 1989 the ratio of men to women was 30:1. The early part of the film establishes the identity of a fictional Josey Aimes (played by Charlize Theron), a single mother with two children who abandons an abusive boyfriend in downstate Minnesota to return to her hometown. She is welcomed by her mom, Alice (played by Sissey Spacek), but not by her father, Hank (played by Richard Jenkins), who believes that her illegitimate children have brought shame to the family. Rumors abound that she is a whore, and she wrongly suffers public humiliation at a hockey match from a woman who shouts in the stands that Josey is messing with her husband, Bobby Sharp (played by Jeremy Renner). Even her son Sammy (played by Thomas Curtis) displays hatred toward her; after all, schoolmates will necessarily tease him in a climate where accusations are difficult to disprove. Nevertheless, Josey and her children live initially with her parents. She gets a job in the coalmine and saves enough to get a house of her own, dilapidated but with potential for remodeling, with a 5 percent down payment. Coalmining is a dirty business, and the coalminers and their bosses portrayed in the film could win an award (if there were one) for the ugliest in cinematic history. Instead, the male coalminers might be awarded the world's most chauvinistic: They openly believe that coalmining is "men's work," so they harass the women every day on the job. The forms of harassment include verbal barbs, nasty words written on walls and machinery, requests for kisses, touching, semen on clothing in a locker, being trapped and toppled in a Porta-Potty requested by the women (who need relief privately while men do so publicly), and ultimately physical assault. Complaints to the management and the union are useless. Throughout the film, segments of a court case are interjected. Eventually, after Josey ends up on the bottom in an assault, she quits the company, suffering from post-traumatic stress, and sues, utilizing Bill White (played by Woody Harrelson), the only lawyer in town, whom she has befriended at a local bar. Her inspiration for the filing the lawsuit is the brave testimony of Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings of 1991. The lawyer warns her that management will use the "nuts and sluts" defense, namely, that she is either delusionary or a tramp. However, when he realizes that he can make considerable money by suing a prosperous company, he accepts the case, though he tells Josey that he changed his mind because he wanted the fame of winning the country's first class action sexual harassment lawsuit that will forever change personnel policies and practices in the United States.