Review: Two Harbors by James Vculek

I previously mentioned this movie in my review of Kate Benson's novel of the same name. I grew up in the Agate City, a third-generation graduate of THHS. All of my great-grandparents: the Carlsons, Ericksons, Nordskogs, and Lassondes, raised their families in Two Harbors. So the coincidence of two artists in the same year capturing a title from that tidy metaphor piqued my interest. Unlike Benson, James Vculek's film uses the notion ably, and captures a setting that is gritty, bland, and vaguely comforting, all at once.

Shooting in black and white in the perpetual meteorological malaise of late winter, Vculek prods the willing viewer toward several homely and cramped interiors: a camper trailer, a labyrinthine flea market, and the front seat of a '94 Buick Skylark. The caustic male lead is played by Alex Cole, whose turn as Vic answers the question "whatever happened to Al Franken's brother, the one who didn't get into Harvard, flunked out of U.W. Superior, and has never held a job for more than three months?" Vic's shellac is balanced by the vulnerable misfit Cassie, played by Catherine Johnson in a performance that could propel this film to a national arthouse audience. (At last report, Vculek was in negotiations with a distributor after landing several film festival awards.)

Why is the metaphor of Two Harbors so apt to Vculek's script? This is, at heart, a story about isolation and yearning. What better place to launch such existential musings than from a place suggesting refuge for two hearts? Vculek skillfully enforces a certain distance between his characters, despite their cramped settings, and lets the unfathomable emptiness of the North speak for itself. Vculek drew inspiration for "Two Harbors" from a 1982 New York Times story about two people from St. Paul found in a car near the Gunflint Trail--one dead, one dazed--following a month-long vigil awaiting an alien rendezvous. Don't let the kooky premise fool you: this film is grounded, and every reverie fizzles. The truly crazy notion is that our technological aptitude has allowed us to maintain distance from those nearest to us. Vculek's characters, for all their oddness, lend credibility to their surroundings. Two Harbors the place, poised for a moment before its inevitable gentrification, provides an ideal fringe-of-the-culture setting for this clever, understated film.