Northfork

The date is the winter of 1955. In two days, the Great Plains town of Northfork, Mont., will be inundated by water from a new hydroelectric project. Most citizens have headed for higher ground. But a few remain: An orphaned boy is bedridden with fever, a man with two wives has built an ark and is living in it, and an elderly man has nailed his shoes to his porch and has armed himself with a shotgun. And ragtag, earthbound angels roam the area on a mission to find the “unknown” member of their group. A team of six men in Tom Landry trench coats, fedoras and identical spit-polished black Fords arrives to remove these inhabitants before they drown. Crusty, compassionate Father Harlan (Nick Nolte) neatly sums up the messy, conflicted feelings and futures of these characters in Mark and Michael Polish’s hauntingly surreal vision about independence and a place and a people on the cusp of extinction: “It depends on how you look at it. We’re either halfway to heaven or halfway to hell.”