Displaying items by tag: Bart Schrijver

THE NORTH

Netherlands, 2025, 130 minutes, Colour.

Bart Harder, Carles Pulido.

Directed by Bart Schrijver.

Definitely a film for walkers, long-term hikers, those who like to spend time contemplating in nature. Already in 2024, there is a film version of Raynor Winn’s novel, The Salt Path, with Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs, set along the Southern English Coast.

This is a Dutch production, writer-director, Bart Schrivers, creating a scenario with two friends, glimpses of them in the past, then 10 years later meeting up and deciding to go on a walk through Scotland, the West Highland Way, then the Cape Wrath Trail, 600 Miles, 28 days according to the plan.

There are many very enthusiastic reviews and blogs. Audiences have wanted to share the wonderful range of scenery of Scotland, the open fields, the mountains and crags, the country lanes, tracks through the forests, rivers and lochs, bays and beaches, small towns along the way, refuge hurts in the mountains. These are all here with fine cinematography.

Some have described it as a contemplatives experience through film.

And the two characters, Chris, from Holland, Lluis with a Spanish background. We gradually learn of their stories, Chris, business, wife, expecting, family hopes. Lluis, coming across as something of a loner, sometimes in phone contact with his father. We do not find out much detail about how they became friends 10 years earlier. And, sometimes they are quite puzzling, one or other going off by himself, not really the greatest of talkers, not the greatest of confidantes, not always communicating well or clearly.

We, the audience, walking with them, might have all kinds of questions to then, to get to know them better, to help us understand what they really want to achieve in the walk, not just the physical exercise, but the psychological impact of this kind of physically demanding experience, what they intended to achieve. But, most of this is left to our imaginations, closely observing each of the friends, hearing what they say, wondering what they don’t say, looking at their body language, some shared experiences, some moments of alienation, somewhat away from each other, but, ultimately, despite the audience wondering, a personal achievement for each of them.

(It should be said that not everybody has been as exhilarated with this film experience as the walkers and the contemplatives. Those who are not great observers of the details around them, who do not notice a lot of the reality, this 130 minutes can be exhaustingly demanding, not much happening, not a development of the characters, not enough to excite the imagination with possibilities – these observations drawing on some of the ideas of Carl Jung and his perceptions on different personality types, sensing people and their living in the present, intuitives and wandering away from reality details.)