Compare DVD : Northfork

Rating: - Offbeat but beautiful meditation on change and acceptance
In 1955, the town of Northfork, Montana was flooded when the gates of a completed dam were closed. Against this backdrop, two related stories are told. In one, three teams of men, motivated by rewards of lakefront property, attempt to get local die-hards to move on before their homes are flooded. This story is filled with humor - visual gags, offbeat characters, and a 100% off-the-wall scene at the local diner. But there are human touches, too, as one father-and-son team argue over whether to save their wife/mother's coffin from the rising flood.
In the other story, Father Harlan (played with heart-breaking tenderness by Nick Nolte) takes care of Irwin, a young orphan who is dying. As Irwin drifts in and out of consciousness, his fevered mind creates visions of angelic beings and reunion out of the landscape and his pitifully few belongings - a model airplane, a comic book, bird feathers he's collected.
This film is very carefully crafted. The two, interleaved stories are visually unified by the "big sky" landscape and a color palette of muted blues, grays, and tans (everything - land, water, buildings, machinery, people - is color-coordinated). The transitions between the two stories deliberately link the fantasy-like character of Irwin's angelic visions with the absurd elements in the evacuation story, and at one point suggest that Irwin's dreams may not be that far off the mark. And finally, Nolte's monologue, inspired by his own experience, goes straight to the heart of the matter.
The result, for me, was a gentle and moving meditation on the inevitability of change and loss, and the grace we find through humor and acceptance. This is visual poetry, a movie to watch again and again.