Product Details

• Actors: Jessica Lange, Charles Durning, Tess Harper, Donald Moffat, Ann Wedgeworth
• Directors: Sam Shepard
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
• VHS Release Date: April 6, 1999
• Run Time: 87 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 0792840763
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #8,743 in Video (See Bestsellers in Video)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Artful Film Making, December 19, 2003

By A Customer

Maybe I watched a different movie than these reviewers!

The Far North that I watched was a story about an isolated
deteriorating farm family in Minnesota who have all gone
a little "off." It is artfully filmed and is at times
experimental. For me though, the experiment is a success.
I highly recommend this movie and I think it is some of
Sam Shepard's best writing.

1.0 out of 5 stars Minnesota Moon Madness Misses Mark, June 21, 2007

By	KerrLines ""Movies,Music,Theatre"" (Baltimore,MD) - See all my reviews

What a debacle!!! This film directorial debut by Award winning playwright/actor Sam Shepard is a shameful waste of time and talent.

During the full moon cycle in The North Woods off of Lake Superior a family reunites when the patriarch,Bertram (Charles Durning) is thrown from his horse,Mel. Katie (Jessica Lange) comes from "the big city",pregnant and unwed to her father's side. He asks her to shoot the horse.......and it just plummets downhill rapidly after that!

This was the most unpleasant and painful 88 minutes that I have spent with a film in a long time.This film is essentially about the bizarre folk of Northern Minnesota who descend from the wild ancestor mongol hordes. The women have gone wild. They do not need men and have survived in spite of them.The men have worked their entire lives on Lake Superior and want things the way they "used to be." That's it! This film explores THAT theme.It is ridiculous.It plays very much like a stage play.The filming is static and lifeless. The actors, which include Tess Harper,Ann Wedgeworth,Donald Moffat and Patricia Arquette seem uncomfortable in their own skins.This is without a doubt one of the worst and most misconceived movies I have ever seen. It plays much like CRIMES OF THE HEART, but with none of the sensitivity and fondness for the characters or situations. There are continuity errors galore (the horse racing sequences that horse racing fans would instantly know were incorrect).

This film tries to be funny,but it misses the mark everytime. Bizarre and eccentric families have often been the fodder for film, but as many times as it has been done FAR NORTH cannot even begin to rank with any of them.

This film is ONE COMPLETE MISS (or MESS!)

3.0 out of 5 stars Blizzards Like Nothing I Have Ever Seen, April 4, 2006

By	R. A Rubin (Eastern, PA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Back in the late 60's I attended a college in Superior, Wisconsin. I was from Philadelphia, Pa and had never experienced the cold and long winters near the small city of Duluth, MN. I met hard drinking people there (there's nothing else to do), blond as Jessica Lange with Scandinavian or Polish accents, many of them. There were good people and bad. The men worked the port ships or the railroad yards. The blizzards were like nothing I have ever seen.

Charles Durning gets a fat man's star turn. Dunning has been thrown by his farm horse and wants the animal shot by his daughter, Jessica Lange. She protests, but agrees to shoot the animal. She's back from the Twin Cities where she works as a professional woman with one in the oven. The old man is in the hospital with wild delusions about the horse, his Alzheimer wife, and life on the farm and it's bitter cold. The drunken Uncle sidekick doesn't help either. Also, there's the younger daughter, unmarried with a teen daughter. The teen, blond as her sisters, is soon to get it on with as many young hockey players as possible.

This is Sam Sheppard's first directorial film with plenty of farce, which gets heavy handed, so the viewer never really gets a grip on the emotional lives of these crazy folks. Maybe that's it. Their lives by Lake Superior are so harsh, they cannot communicate a sensible thought. Nevertheless, Far North is a snapshot of an out of the way, beautiful place that will interest the curious.