ReBecca Richardson Blog 11- film

In the film Northfork, a little boy is dying, and the viewer is led to question if the angels he finds, are real or a figment of his imagination. We know that the boy is sick and yet we know not why. As he dreams he is closer to death, to the angels. All four share the names of items on his night stand. A hand holding a flower, a comic of Hercules, a plane, cod liver oil, a cup of tea, and some spectacles. The angels names are flower Hercules, cup of tea, cod, and happy (who has fake hands, and wears spectacles). If these beings are figments of the boy’s imagination then it would make sense because he wants a family, and the items on his night stand are what he is most familiar with. No one wants a sick child, so in a sense he is stuck in the orphanage; his makeshift home. Also the preacher who is meant to lead the boy to find a home has a cane, and the head of the cane appears to be a dog head. When the boy dreams and goes to find an angel he is led by a tall creature with a dog like head. The Angel characters are also childlike in their demeanor, like when they were experimenting with the tranquilizer gun.
On another level the Angels could be real, and yet they visually suit the ideals and comforts of what the child would suspect or be comfortable with. One of the guys who is trying to kick people out of town sees these angels when he gets a concussion. We the viewers only know this because of his mannerisms after the encounter. He stares at them and when his son asks questions he simply rushes out of the house as though he were trying to run away from something. Also the way flower Hercules speaks to the boy when he is dying is not like the thoughts of a child, but rather something transcendent. The boy asks if flower is mother or father. She replies that she is both and neither, and then explains that she simply is. Eventually they leave together in a plane like the one on his night stand and he dies. Because of the other man’s encounter with the angels I think that they were real, but they showed themselves to the boy in a fashion that would be familiar to him.