The North is a curious, quietly affecting film: two men, perhaps in their forties, one Dutch, one Spanish or Latino ( not sure exactly what nationality but occasionally speaking Spanish), set out to walk around 600 km along two Scottish highland trails.
If, like me, you go into the cinema knowing nothing of the story, you spend the early stretches wondering what exactly you’re watching. Who are these men to each other? Why this walk? Why now?
For a long time, the film offers no exposition, no backstory, no convenient flashbacks. It simply begins with them walking — and for long stretches, that’s all they do. They walk, walk, walk; they sleep, sleep, sleep; and they say surprisingly little. Much later you get a few glimpses that sort of help. But only a little.
Chris, the Dutchman, is the less taciturn of the two and does let slip that he and his partner are thinking about starting a family. Lluis says it’s not for him. He doesn’t think he’d be a good father. That’s about as close as the film gets to a heart‑to‑heart early on.
Their silences are not awkward so much as habitual, the kind of quiet that grows between men who once knew each other well but haven’t kept close. We learn in fragments that Lluis gave up a career shooting wedding videos, that he had testicular cancer two years earlier, that Chris didn’t know. They’re close, but not that close; connected, but not intimate. Or so it seems.
The film’s 130‑minute runtime feels almost as long as the trek itself, and that’s deliberate. This is not a road movie but a trail movie, one that understands the strange mental rhythms of long-distance walking: the way conversation thins out, the way thoughts loop, the way the landscape becomes both companion and mirror.
Along the way they meet other walkers — briefly. A man in a bothy – a hut – tells them about his brother’s cancer, prompting Lluis’s quiet admission of his own. A young woman appears out of nowhere to correct their bearings and vanishes after sharing a sunrise. These encounters feel less like plot points than reminders that the world is full of people on their own journeys.
After finishing the first trail along the West Highland Way, Lluis wants to rest his sore knee; Chris wants to push on. He does. Lluis eventually catches up by bussing ahead. Only then do we realise Chris has been following his phone’s GPS the whole time, while Lluis prefers maps, and produces some. It’s a small detail but a telling one: Chris wants efficiency, clarity, progress; Lluis wants to feel his way, even if it means getting lost and losing time. The film is full of such metaphors, offered without commentary.
Very late in the film, perhaps around the nearly two hour mark, Chris and Lluis meet a 69‑year‑old hiker who tells them: “Nothing brings out the truth in you, like walking in nature.” It’s a line that could have sunk the film, but instead it lands with a kind of weathered simplicity. Lluis seems to believe it. Chris, the office-bound professional with a partner and a possible child on the horizon, isn’t so sure and you sense he may be second guessing his priorities. On a beach, alone, he breaks down — one of the film’s few overtly emotional moments, and one of its most powerful. Nature doesn’t heal him; it simply strips him back.
By the end, the men embrace — not triumphantly, not cathartically, but with the tentative, overdue force of people who still don’t quite know how to say what they feel.
When all is said and done, The North is less a story than a state of mind: a long, slow exhalation in which two men try, and only partly succeed, to find their way back to each other and to understand their relationship with the wider world. Some viewers will find its silences maddening; others will find them honest. I found them quietly moving, like the final embrace — full of things that remain unsaid.
I should add there’s some sensational scenery in the Scottish highlands along the way, and along the coastline, but sometimes you miss it because, like Lluis, you find yourself keeping your head down and puzzling over what’s driving these two guys. They want to be there, but how much do they really? Was it good for them? Did they resolve anything alone or together? I don’t know.
While I can’t claim to be a long distance trekker, strangely, I did enjoy The North. And I suspect others will too. I was constantly waiting to see if the guys would fall violently apart, or maintain their equilibrium to the end. They did good. And I was pleased for them.
What rating do I give the film? As it’s really a long distance hike, I am disinclined to rate it at all and simply say it’s a good walk. Maybe 7/10, if pressed. I’ll keep thinking about it. Go see for yourself and tell me what you think!
The North: Directed by Bart Schrijver. With Bart Harder, Carles Pulido, Olly Bassi, Gráinne Blumenthal. Opens at Luna Cinemas and Palace Raine Square from 4 June.
*By Michael Barker, Editor, Fremantle Shipping News
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