Niki Caro's first film, the award-winning Whale Rider, explored the repercussions of gender in male-dominated Maori society. Her latest, NORTH COUNTRY, could be seen as a continuation of that exploration, but its new locus -- the hard and unforgiving mining culture of northern Minnesota in the 1980's -- offers up a contemporaneity and bitter elegance that energizes and propels the film forward. Led with winning grace by three Oscar winners (Charlize Theron, Frances McDormand, and Sissy Spacek), Caro's film occasionally suffers from cartoonishness, especially in its mawkish courtroom finale. But for the most part, NORTH COUNTRY is an astonishingly powerful piece of cinema, documenting the savagery of sexism so effectively that it can stand (as its ad campaign justifiably touts) alongside greats like Silkwood and Norma Rae.

Caro and her legendary cinematographer, Chris Menges (The Killing Fields), use the factory's billowing smoke, the harsh wintry landscape, and the exploding ridges of rock as blisteringly astute metaphors. This is rough territory, a world so bleak and rough that only men have tamed it. That is, until the Supreme Court ruled in the mid-80's that the mines were guilty of sexist hiring practices. The first wave of female miners included Josey Aimes (Theron), a down-on-her-luck victim of a teenage rape and an abusive ex-husband looking for a way to support her two children. At first, the job dangled by union rep Glory (McDormand) is so lucrative that it seems like heaven; the reality, however, is significantly less divine. Tormented by groping hands, vicious pranks, and physical intimidation, the women miners end up risking their very lives simply by going to work. To complain to management is an impossibility...for they, like the tormentors, are retrograde men who see women as pretty objects...or as carpetbaggers who took employment away from their friends and neighbors.

Blasting rock is a savage business; as tough as the women are, the masculine ethos of mining is overpowering, suffocating. Composer Gustavo Santaolalla, who made an indelible contribution last year to the atmosphere of The Motorcycle Diaries, makes a similarly invaluable effort here, matching the wasted landscapes with moody orchestral flourishes and simple instrumental breaks. The creative team of NORTH COUNTRY manages the trick of finding refinement in the roughness, a quiet power in this world's serene simplicity.

What makes NORTH COUNTRY compelling and eloquent are its performances; the film assembles one of the most impressive casts of the year. As Josey, Theron unquestionably asserts that she is a dramatic actress to be reckoned with; balancing the pressures of parents, children, work, and single motherhood, she makes Josey an unlikely, surprising and eccentric heroine. Theron is a ravishing beauty, and like Halle Berry in Monster's Ball, she opens herself up for easy criticism that she's too beautiful for the role. But as a woman drowning in societal neglect and corporate abuse, she never gives her beauty a second thought, making Josey believable and sympathetic. It helps that she is surrounded by the crusty, fierce performance of McDormand, a magnetic presence whose inner strength is channeled to great effect. Spacek and Richard Jenkins (Six Feet Under) are riveting as Josey's dysfunctional parents; as the men in Glory and Josey's lives, Sean Bean (Goldeneye) and Woody Harrelson (The Hi-Lo Country) are masters of restrained passion.

Inspired by the actual case that set the precedent for class-action sexual harassment suits, NORTH COUNTRY loses momentum when it devolves into a courtroom showdown; the final climax exudes a sentimentality that seems at odds with the austere film that preceded it. By that time, however, the battle may have already been won. Caro has crafted an unusually taut film about misogyny that, for the most part, escapes the clichés that often bog down the battle of the sexes. The cruelty of the inner world is impeccably matched by the severity of the outside one; it is a marriage of celluloid and metaphor that infuses each with added complexity, nuance, and detail. It is not hard to imagine that NORTH COUNTRY may be one of the major films about women of this still-new millennium....a document of an earlier time that has much to say to future generations.

-- Gabriel Shanks