Northern Lights

Northern Lights (1978) was written and directed by John Hanson and Rob Nilsson. The setting is rural North Dakota about a century ago.

The film stars Robert Behling as Ray Sorensen, a young farmer who works on his father's farm with his brother John, portrayed by Joe Spano. Susan Lynch plays the woman Ray loves, Inga Olsness. The rest of the cast are non-professionals. They're local people in North Dakota.

This is a powerful film about the hardships of crushing poverty, despite the strong work ethic of the farmers. Big business interests and conservative politicians conspired to bring the farmers into debt, which ultimately lead to the foreclosure of their farms.

As the movie progressives, we follow Ray Sorensen as he recognizes the injustices around him, and becomes an organizer for the liberal Nonpartisan League (NPL). In the early 20th Century, many NPL candidates were elected to government offices. The party enacted its progressive programs, including establishing state-owned banks, mills, and a railroad.

The film was amazingly effective in making us feel--not just see--the cold weather and the terrible predicament in which good people found themselves.

The absolutely brilliant b/w cinematography was the work of Judy Irola. Almost every frame could be enlarged into a great still photo.

If you can't see this film, you obviously can't appreciate it, and that's the problem. We found an unused VHS, which hadn't deteriorated too badly.

Previous reviewers have lamented the lack of this movie in DVD. No copies are available in DVD or VHS on Amazon or eBay. Some colleges own copies, so maybe you could get the film via interlibrary loan.

Northern Lights has an anemic 7.0 IMDb rating. I'm not sure why it's so low. It's much better than that.

This is a great movie. It would surely work better on a large screen, but it worked well enough for us on VHS. If you can find it, see it!

My wife and I saw _Northern Lights_ on its release in a movie theater in the ante-VHS/DVD/Web era, and both share the view that this is a great film. It brings to mind Howard Zinn's _People's History of the United States_ in that it immerses us in an authentic American narrative that has generally not appeared in the mainstream, either historical or cinematic. It's over thirty years since I've seen it, so I can only report the memory of my feelings, and I recall being stirred and drawn in, emotionally engaged, feeling that this movie was a real work of art. It came up recently when we were discussing a visiting friend's ancestry. I'm bummed that it's apparently unavailable? On Amazon, the VHS tape is selling for a low of $74 and a high of $132.09. Doesn't this price suggest that there's a market for this film out there, so WOULDN'T IT MAKE BUSINESS SENSE to put it out on DVD? If anyone reading this knows how this works, maybe they could pursue it. Yoo-hoo, Criterion Collection?

In Northern Lights, events which threatened to supplant the 19th century Mid Western Scandinavian immigrants from their farms are inextricably wound around images of light, cold and bleak yet rich landscape in a hostile world. The film effectively transplants the cozy viewer onto a frigid plain that makes him shiver and gasp at the audacity and courage of a people determined to survive under the worst conditions. And yet not only do they survive, they develop a kind of weed-like tenacity that finds sustenance in the most unlikely places and makes us wonder wide-eyed at their ability to prosper. Theirs is a community threatened by powerful interests who would ride on the backs of those men and women who already bear the burden of an almost unbelievably heavy load. Through it all, we admire the beauty they have found, the simplicity of their tenacity, the magnificence of the Northern Lights in an already deep and mysterious sky. The people in this drama are themselves the Northern Lights who settled a region. This is film-making and storytelling at its best.

... in the middle of a community. the images, the dialogues, the landscapes, the gestures. more powerful than the story itself. because it is a well known fight for justice. because the sadness and the enthusiasm for a fragile cause are familiar from neo-realism. and the events are good reference to " Terra tremula". but it is more than a chronicle . or hommage. or remember. it is one of films who you expect. as a sort of refuge. as the meet with old fashion cinema and its virtues. a film about survive. and love. and friendship and brotherhood and solitude, challenges and justice. poetic, profound, superb, salted.

A dramamentary of the forming of the Non-Partisan League in North Dakota -- this stark, loving film portrays the struggle of the local NoDaks versus the railroads, banks and granaries controlled by distant Minnesotans. This is a classic that reaches toward the level of "Salt of the Earth."