Having missed the Polish Brothers’ first two films, the independently made Twin Falls Idaho and Jackpot, we cannot comment on how far this much-lauded actor/ writer/director/producer team may have advanced their unique filmmaking talents. But Northfork, billed as the final episode in their trilogy about the American heartland, certainly confirms that twins Mark and Michael Polish have mastered at least one of the major cinematic arts: They know how to exquisitely light and frame a scene, and they’ve set a new standard for the importance of choosing and maintaining a film’s 'palette' to heighten an effect. Which means that Northfork is visually stunning throughout.

However, in most of their other major filmmaking skills, such as scriptwriting, the Polish Brothers are still tinkering. They’re calling Northfork a film experiment in the literary style known as 'magic realism,' which may explain the lack of a compelling and/or coherent plot structure. What story there is goes something like this: It is 1955 in a Montana town called Northfork, which is about to be flooded because of the construction of a dam. Most residents have left, but the dozen or so who remain are being rounded up by a six-man, black-garbed Evacuation Committee, headed by Walter (James Woods.) One of the last to leave is a priest, Father Harlan (Nick Nolte), who’s staying behind to tend to a dying boy, Irwin (Duel Farnes), who may be a angel—or perhaps he’s only dreaming he’s an angel. Whatever.

Whether in dream or reality, Irwin has apparently been separated from his 'family' of earthbound angels, a bizarrely costumed, ragtag group with names like Happy (Anthony Edwards as a nearly blind double amputee), Flower Hercules (Daryl Hannah, more androgynous than ever in a short, spiky wig and a Romeo getup), and Cup of Tea (a sly, elegant Robin Sachs), who moon around one of the abandoned town’s vacant houses, waiting for Irwin.

That’s basically it. Except for some truly wacky bits of dialogue, the actors don’t get much leeway to act, and the talents of some (like Peter Coyote and Kyle MacLachlan) are totally wasted. Nolte, in his priestly cassock, is so seriously pious he’s almost laughable. Only Woods exhibits the self-mocking panache needed to get through this sort of thing, and he also gets some of the zaniest lines. For instance, when Walter (Woods) explains to his son Willis (Mark Polish) why they must dig up and relocate his mother’s coffin he shouts: 'When this small town becomes the biggest lake west of the Mississippi, your mother could be the catch of the day!'

Actually, Northfork’s press notes, offering explanatory quotes from the filmmakers, contain much more fascinating and enlightening lines than the film itself. It’s pretty obvious, even without the explanations, that this is a fairy tale, full of symbolism, about the usual fairy-tale stuff—life, death, loss, good and evil, endings and beginnings, etc. But, according to the notes, the Polish brothers also stuck in a couple of symbolic inside jokes which seem directly related to the negative criticism their scripts might have previously received—for example, for their lack of a traditional structure. You want a dramatic 'arc'? The Northfolk script includes a house shaped like an ark, which sits dramatically on the plains, ready to float when the flood comes. You want a 'backstory'? The Polishes concocted a story about how the wings were surgically removed from the angel Irwin’s back. O-kay.

Northfork’s symbolism will be endlessly discussed, no doubt, by film students and other movie-addled folk. Much of the symbolic content is too obscure to fathom, if you want to know the truth, and much of the action is so still as to be stagnant. What saves the film, what gives it some semblance of emotional power, is its stark visual beauty. First, there’s the forbidding landscape: Northfork was shot on location in Montana in an amazing 24 days of a snowy, windy spring. One can’t help but shiver at the sight of the bare, rolling hills of the high plains, a backdrop of the clean white peaks of the Rockies and the gray, wind-whipped clouds above.

At first, it’s difficult to tell if Northfork was shot in black-and-white—or in color, which is the case. The grayness of the exteriors are matched by the same tones in the interiors: the old, gray clapboard houses, with the pale daylight oozing through gray panes of glass. Again, we learn from the press notes that director Michael Polish ordered that everything in the film, 'the buildings, clothing, accessories, anything and everything that was brought onto the set,' had to fit within 'ten shades of gray-scale.' Interesting.

Is Northfork cold and bleak? Is it frequently obtuse and boring? Yes, all of that. But it's also a memorably beautiful movie.