Northfork was a film in which the boundaries of narrative and dream were severely blurred. When you watch it, you’re never quite sure what is real and what is not. Funny, one of the Evacuation Committee men said, "This country is being divided into two types of people: Ford People and Chevy People." This binary does NOT describe the number of ways this film can be interpreted…
Depending on how you feel when you watch the film, I think you could see it as about loss and grief, or about being lost and found, or about faith and doubt, or about community and loneliness, or about life, death and resurrection.
Northfork is has a plethora of biblical imagery, which is often twisted:
1)There is an ark, but all the animals in it are stuffed/mounted.
2)The “prodigal son” is actually a dying child whose adoptive parents refuse to take him as a burden due to his sickness.
3)The “angels” are rather human—lost, broken, and not altogether there. None of them ever seem happy, perhaps because they are constantly searching for the lost angel.
Irwin, the dying orphan, wants them to believe HE is the lost angel—it is here that you realize they are a figment of his imagination as he lay dying.
The Evacuation Committee is also a strange set of angels—six scary, identical men trying to urge families to leave for higher ground. You never really figure out the nature of these angels: real or not, angel or not, good or not…
All in all, the movie is a strange, hard to understand one. I definitely need to give it another watch if I am to commentate on it any further.
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