by Cain Noble-Davies
Worth: $13.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Bart Harder, Carles Pulido
Intro:
... can often feel like the characters themselves do at one point: walking in circles.
Chris (Bart Harder) and Lluis (Carlos Pulido) are friends who decide to hike along the Cape Wrath Trail, a trek in Scotland from Fort William to the titular cape (covering a good 321km). Over the course of several days for them, and just over two hours for us, that adventure ends up being much longer and more challenging than they had anticipated.
Following up on his also-hiking-centric feature debut Human Nature, writer/director Bart Schrijver uses navigating swampy, rain-soaked, and occasionally elevated terrain on the hike as thematic shorthand for the difficulty in navigating social situations and bonds, particularly for men. Along with capturing gorgeous vistas of the Scottish Highlands, DP Twan Peeters also shoots many a moment where Chris and Lluis (although it’s mostly Chris) struggle to open up with someone they’ve supposedly known for a long time. Talking with fellow hikers they’ve just met comes easier than with each other, and as much pain as the camera shows them both going through, there’s so much spiky tension in their silence that it’s enough to make more than a few viewers feel the urge to yell “Say something!” at the screen.
Now, ‘men who are sad and/or isolated’ is such a prevalent narrative trope, even outside of cinema, that it might as well be its own sub-genre. And given that a lot of modern discourse concerning what has been dubbed the ‘Male Loneliness Epidemic’ ends up spending more time on what not to do and who not to listen to (*cough*Andrew Tate*cough*) than any healthy alternative modes of behaviour, the run time combined with the deliberate pacing can feel a bit stretched-out for what it ultimately has to say. It’s something reinforced by the hike itself, as after all the detours, the duo’s trek ends up clocking in at nearly twice the length of the straight-forward trail. And man, does it feel like it.
But at the same time, credit is due for how densely-packed each moment is when it comes to highlighting the effects of the ‘suffer in silence’ mindset. While some of the pacing banks on a Gerry-esque mentality, where the duration of each scene is meant to correspond with how long the shown activity would actually take without the magic of editing, these sequences may be saying similar things to each other but the specific verbal and visual vocabulary shows variety all the same. It strikes a similar chord to The Banshees of Inisherin in its weaponisation of small talk, where people have conversations about how they’re not having conversations. Vocalised frustration at the things not being vocalised.
It also helps that the film doesn’t just wallow in that void of silence, expanding on Chris and Lluis’ reactions to it and even delving into their own reasons for keeping quiet. Like Chris going from mentioning that he hasn’t talked with his father recently, to wanting to be a father himself. Or an encounter with a local hiker that leads to a dramatic reveal, which in turn leads Chris to focus more on his own feelings on just finding this out as opposed to those of the person actually affected by it.
Admittedly, as just illustrated, most of the formative moments come from Chris, with Lluis shown as being more in-touch with his feelings and willing to talk about them… but even he has his rough patches, not knowing whether Chris would even be receptive if he truly spoke with him. The hike itself even reveals something weirdly telling about group activities as friendship-building exercises, where the want to succeed in the activity as a personal achievement can lead to losing sight of the real reason it’s being done in the first place: to strengthen connections with others, not just your own ego.
The North is a Hug Your Homies PSA. The visuals and immaculate sound mixing are a big part of the experience (at times, it feels like you’re just as much a part of the hike as the characters are), and in conveying the quiet menace of social isolation and anxiety, it is effective. Any time a character is on the beach, it is remarkable how emotionally devastating it all gets. All that being said, it can often feel like the characters themselves do at one point: walking in circles.
