Not long ago, my good friend Mark announced to us that he was dipping a pinky toe into the barracuda-infested waters of dating. As you might imagine, it’s been a good news/bad news kind of scenario. The good news is that he’s chatted with a number of smart, interesting, and cool women. The bad news is that many, many women out there list only the following interests in their dating profiles:

• Festivals
• Wine
• Hiking

I have no issue with the first two. Who doesn’t like a nice festival, right? A nice glass of wine is delightful.* Hiking, though, there’s the rub. I like aspects of hiking. I like having gone hiking. I like striding through the woods, appreciating the stunning vistas, and not getting attacked by a mountain lion/bear/moose/what have you.

The odd thing about hiking is, it’s simultaneously boring and mind-altering. There are moments where nothing matters except for one foot going in front of the other. Your world shrinks to the size of the path. After a while, a long while, that path can also lead inside you. That’s the premise of The North, a film of staggering beauty and quiet, elusive truths.

If you’re a dopey American like me, the idea of a six hundred kilometer hike is meaningless. To dumb it down for us, six hundred kilometers equals a little over three hundred seventy-two miles. That is, and I’m not exaggerating, a long ass hike. It’s a hike found in Scotland that factors in the West Highland Way and the Cape Wrath Trail.** It’s a hike that meanders through the wild desolation of the Highlands, and where hikers can experience weather that’s alternately magnificent, gloomy, and legendarily shitty.

The plan is for Chris (Bart Harder) and Lluis (Carles Pulido) to hike all of it. They’ve been friends forever, and they’ve lived their own lives without seeing each other for ten years. A long distance walking trip is the perfect opportunity for them to reconnect, and perhaps even strengthen their friendship. 

Is such a thing possible? Perhaps, but as is usually the case with friendship, it won’t be easy. Chris is in a long term relationship. There’s talk of kids, the kind of conversation that would effectively put the kibosh on future hiking trips. He’s also in a high pressure career, one where the office calls him frequently and begs him to cut his trip short. Lluis is in a very different place. He’s quit his old job as a wedding photographer, and whether or not he’s happy about it, he lives the single life. He has no interest in kids. His interest lies in channeling his creativity in a new direction. 

So they walk. And walk. And walk. Through sheets of rain, bogs, along craggy cliffs and through lonesome beaches. Sometimes together, often alone. Sometimes they barely speak, while other times they giggle as they play Uno in their tent. As they hike, rest, and hike again, they’ll learn what makes them tick, what binds them together, and what could push them apart.

Director Bart Schrijver wrote, “When you make a film about hiking, I believe you also have to hike.”*** He took that concept extremely seriously. A little research told me that he hiked the West Highland Way and the Cape Wrath Trail solo before production for The North began. During the shoot itself, his crew (which consisted of Schrijver, two actors, a camera operator, a sound recordist, and a documentarian) hiked four to six days at a time and carried everything they needed on their backs. Whatever weather they experienced, they shot in. When I learned all of that, my first thought was, “You don’t have to use the excuse of making a movie to go hiking. You can just…go hiking.”

And yet, Schrijver’s strategy is brilliant. By shooting the film chronologically, a thing that’s generally not done due to budgetary challenges, he’s able to somewhat replicate for the audience the experience of the characters. As the hike begins, we see Chris and Lluis energetic and loosey-goosey. As it progresses, there are stretches that are tedious, tense, and ultimately emotional. All of it within the bogs, crags, fields, and coastlines of the Highlands. I’ve written before about smart filmmakers increasing production value by shooting in picturesque places. This must have been a punishing shoot, but Schrijver gets millions of dollars in production value alone with those stunning landscapes. Plus, those landscapes dwarf our characters, their situations, and their emotions. That doesn’t minimize how they feel. Perhaps it’s putting it all in the correct perspective, since the sea doesn’t care who feels what.

What does this film tell us about the characters, though? As the screenwriter, Schrijver laser focuses on the concept of “show, don’t tell.” We learn what we need to know about Chris and Lluis from behavior, not exposition. We see Lluis grimly trekking along, and we also see Chris marveling at a remote waterfall. We see snippets of their lives outside the trail. We see the two of them have something that could be an emotional breakdown, a revelation, or quite a lot of both. There isn’t much in the way of a plot here, and I maintain more of a plot would be unnecessary.**** We’re alongside Lluis and Chris, experiencing the hike and learning about them the whole time. For the kind of film The North is, that’s the only knowledge necessary.

For that concept to work, the right leads needed to be cast. Both Carles Pulido and Bart Harder deliver natural and subtle performances. Pulido’s Lluis is the more overtly “broken” of the two. We learn that whatever his initial plans for life were, they haven’t exactly gone according to plan. It’s possible, too, that Lluis has no plan once the hike concludes, and that might be why he grimly trudges through the landscape. Bart Harder’s Chris is the guy who appears to be living the dream. Is he, though? He seems to be on his way to hating his career, and something festers in him, leading to a breakdown on an isolated beach. Harder and Pulido do strong work, and communicate so much without leaning on exposition. It’s the kind of physical acting that film students would do well to study.

The North is a travelogue showcasing the wonders of the Scottish Highlands. It’s a drama about a friendship that might be frayed, might be breaking, and might be strengthening. It’s also a meditation about, and I’m paraphrasing, how a trial in the wilderness reveals who you are. I know two things for certain. The first is that The North is a low key masterpiece. The second is that a stroll up the West Highland Way and Cape Wrath Trail would be the worst date possible for Mark. 

*Though when I hear, “My interest is wine,” I understand that to mean, “I like getting hammered.”

**If you a) happen to find yourself in Scotland and b) want to take a shot at this, you can learn about the West Highland Way here and the Cape Wrath trail here.

***I appreciate Schrijver’s commitment to authenticity, but let’s hope his next film isn’t about serial murder. 

****Having said that, if you’re looking for a strong genre film set in the Highlands, check out A Lonely Place to Die immediately.

Tim Brennan Movie Critic

Tim has been alarmingly enthusiastic about movies ever since childhood. He grew up in Boulder and, foolishly, left Colorado to study Communications in Washington State. Making matters worse, he moved to Connecticut after meeting his too-good-for-him wife. Drawn by the Rockies and a mild climate, he triumphantly returned and settled down back in Boulder County. He's written numerous screenplays, loves hiking, and embarrassed himself in front of Samuel L. Jackson. True story.