Digging deep to stake their claim

FOR many in white-collar America, the mere term “sexual harassment” sounds so 1991, as it conjures up the hazy memory of an indignant Anita Hill in her robin’s-egg-blue suit taking on Clarence Thomas during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings. The phrase has lost much of its power to shock, and it has somehow migrated into the tawdry realm of TV plotlines and the fuzzy arena of “he said, she said.”

But there was no such gray area for the female iron miners from the Mesabi Range in Minnesota. The litigants in Jenson vs. Eveleth Mines, the nation’s first sexual harassment class-action case, were subjected to sexualized graffiti, lewd talk, semen in their lockers, pinching, crotch-grabbing, breast-pulling and various forms of violent assault.

That’s the graphic, unambiguous ground Hollywood has chosen for “North Country,” one of its first major films to tackle sexual harassment from the woman’s point of view (it will open Oct. 14). Unlike Hollywood’s last big-budget treatise on the issue, the 1994 Demi Moore-Michael Douglas opus “Disclosure,” in which Moore played a conniving corporate liar out to get the hapless Douglas, this $35-million film presumes the harassment is real, and focuses on the fictional story of beleaguered single mom Josey Aimes, played by Charlize Theron, who “backs into her politics because she has a need to feed her kids and put a roof over her head,” says screenwriter Michael Seitzman.

Inspired by the book “Class Action: The Story of Lois Jenson and the Landmark Case that Changed Sexual Harassment Law,” by Clara Bingham and Laura Leedy Gansler, “North Country” falls into the lineage of social-activist films such as “Norma Rae,” “Silkwood” and, more recently, “Erin Brockovich.”

All have been powered by female protagonists. But unlike its antecedents, which dealt with the simple moral equation of corporations (bad) and working people (good), “North Country” must deal with sexual harassment’s infinitely stickier wicket -- where it’s miner versus miner, blue-collar men furious at losing scarce jobs to women, even though these women might happen to be their sisters or daughters. It’s set in what’s among the most insular of American communities, where the feminist revolution hasn’t made much of a dent, and even the cold forms a hard carapace against the outside world.

“You think that the [harassment] is just an instance, but it bled into every aspect of their life, into their families and into their kids,” says Theron. “It wasn’t their solo adventure, their solo fight. They knew when they stepped into [this fight] it was going to cause a lot of pain and suffering for many people around them.” Indeed, one of the film’s leitmotifs is the social ostracism that rained down on those who waged the suit, and their children.

In today’s scene, shot on a sound stage in New Mexico, an uncertain Josey -- accompanied by the feisty Glory (played by Frances McDormand) -- enters the mine’s lunchroom on her first day of work, where she finds 300 men (including Theron’s on-screen father, played by Richard Jenkins) and, over in the corner, a small klatch of women. All the actors -- men and women -- wear green coveralls, and mostly flannel shirts, grime and heavy boots that make them lumber along like convicts. For a world-class beauty, Theron seems to fade appropriately into the scene, her blond locks transformed into a bad ‘70s brown fringe, and her tall, lithe physique now shot through with wariness.

The politics of the film production are almost the exact inverse of the patriarchy depicted on the screen. The 38-year-old director, New Zealander Niki Caro, and the assistant director, Liz Tan, are women. Indeed, the book was brought to Warner Bros. by Seitzman and producer Nick Wechsler, as well as executive producer Helen Bartlett, who learned of Bingham’s book in her Madeira School alumnae letter, and brought it to another friend (and Madeira alumna), Warner Bros. film executive Courtenay Valenti.

On set, the female miners’ table, far from being a bastion of outcasts surrounded by teeming male hostility, appears to be the lair of the cool kids, the nexus of almost perpetual joking. Between takes, Theron pals around with her fellow female miners, dances with one of the male actors (until one of her female colleagues jokingly cuts in) and sits on the lap of one of her on-screen tormentors. Yet when the kidding stops and she is merely resting at the table between takes, she seems almost unbearably sad.

In this scene, one of the female miners, played by newcomer Michelle Monaghan, discovers a fake penis in her lunchbox, not exactly a freak occurrence in the mines. “I once got a chocolate [one] wrapped up in a plain box with electrical tape for Christmas,” recalls an extra, a real female miner who’s been flown in from Minnesota to add authenticity to the production. The real miner wasn’t particularly rattled by the sight. “I rewrapped it and gave it to my foreman,” she adds waggishly.

During shooting, however, when Monaghan discovers the appendage atop her ham sandwich, she shrieks.

One of the miners -- the perpetrator of the prank -- teases, “No getting off in the lunchroom!”

Theron’s character, who’s sitting across from Monaghan, makes a sly joke about it, the kind of witty rebuff meant to feign nonchalance: “Well, it won’t leave the toilet seat up and it won’t fart in bed. I think I might have to marry it.”

On one of Theron’s first takes, the Oscar-winner looks appalled when she sees the penis but then grabs it and practically waves it around with defiance.

“Did I cross the line?” Theron asks afterward. She’s clearly not happy with the take. “I just wasn’t there,” she says to Caro, and later adds more emphatically to cinematographer Chris Menges, “That was crap.”

Theron tries to regroup. She gets the dialect coach, who’s been on set to make sure everyone stays in their “Fargo”-like vowels, throws her arm around her as the two women talk, and then adjusts her makeup herself. Between the many takes that follow, Caro whispers in her ear. In the next take, Theron appears shyer, more uncertain -- her eyes open wider in amazement when the penis is discovered. This time, Theron turns impish as she subverts the taunt with humor. On one take, she nonchalantly throws a helmet over the offending item. In another, she looks vaguely irritated by it. In the next take, she’s more assertive, and confident, almost defiant. Theron gets more sassy, as if her character can let the crude innuendo roll off her back.

TAPPING INTO THEIR STRENGTH

FINDING the right tone to play Josey Aimes -- a single mother and not a particularly good one at that -- is one of the keys to making “North Country” work.

It was a part hotly campaigned for by a number of actresses, and it landed in Theron’s lap as one of the plums that dropped after she won an Oscar in 2004 for her portrayal of serial killer Aileen Wuornos in the film “Monster.”

Months after filming has wrapped, Theron is sitting in the garden of Hollywood’s Chateau Marmont. She is now all blondness and scrubbed beauty, her hair casually pulled back, her frame thin but nonetheless strapping in a long, silky, purple shirt, a cropped white jacket and chunky, African-looking brown beads. A few days shy of 30, Theron is a $10-million actress, but she tries to carry it lightly.

She’s talking about how she could relate to those fierce Iron Range women because of their toughness, and lack of self-pity.

“I was talking to Niki about this yesterday,” she says. “She’s from New Zealand. I’m from South Africa.” They’re pointedly not Californians or New Yorkers. “When I read the script I really related to that kind of strength in women. It’s very typical of South African women. When you deal with a country with harsh landscapes, where life isn’t really convenient, the nature of the beast is you do what you have to do. I really felt that when I was in Minnesota. I felt that when I met these women. They’re really incredibly strong, stronger than most women, because it’s what they have to be to survive. Those are my favorite kind of women. People who can really prioritize. ‘This isn’t really worth crying about. I have children to feed and I’ve got a life to live. I’m not going to be a princess about it.’ Women who really take control of the situation.”

Theron speaks in accentless English, her lower timber and perfect elocution perhaps the only giveaways that English is not her first language. Before she gained 30 pounds and turned herself into that virago of fury and vulnerability that was Wuornos, Theron was seen as a beautiful creampuff, the almost platonic ideal of male fantasy beauty. The story of her life is almost totemic in its mythology. She grew up in South Africa on a farm where her parents had a road construction business.

She modeled in Europe and wanted to be a dancer until injuries sidelined her, so she moved to Los Angeles, where she learned English from the television set and landed her first agent while standing in line at the bank. The parts followed in quick succession, usually as the love interest of the leading man such as Keanu Reeves (“The Devil’s Advocate”) and Tobey Maguire (“The Cider House Rules”).

Part of her biography is that in 1991 -- the year “North Country” takes place, when Theron was 15 -- her mother shot her father dead after he came home drunk and, wielding a gun, vowed to shoot his wife and daughter. (It was later ruled self-defense.) It’s not something Theron talks about, although her mother, Gerda, is a constant presence. Theron conducts most of her life in English, except when she talks Afrikaans with her mother, who lives three minutes from her L.A. home. “If I’ve spent three consecutive days with her, I’ll just blurt something out in Afrikaans thinking I’m saying it in English. I think it will always be that way, because I have her in my life.”

Her mother offered Theron her insight into Josey, who’s not taking on the mines out of simple social justice but out of a more primitive drive.

“The children,” she explains simply. “My mom says ... ‘It’s something you can’t comprehend until you have a child. It’s not something you choose. It’s an instinct that kicks in. There’s no limit to what you would do for your child.’

“Josey comes into the story with a lot of bad history, and her first act in the film is taking control. [She’s saying,] ‘I’m partly responsible for putting me and my children into these really bad situations and I can’t keep doing that.’ In the second act, she’s trying to be a responsible single mom. It wasn’t just for herself, but it was for herself as well. She had to grow up as well.”

MOVING IN THE SAME DIRECTION

FOR Theron, part of the appeal of the project was Caro, whom she’d met on the Oscar circuit, as “Monster” and Caro’s film “Whale Rider” were released by the indie Newmarket Films. Theron admits that at one point, the long run up to the Oscars got so overwhelming that she actually high-tailed it to Brazil with a backpack and her boyfriend, Irish actor Stuart Townsend, and returned only three days before the ceremony. “It’s a lot of attention for one human being. I don’t know if it’s quite healthy,” says Theron, whose win catapulted her from starlet to star. She’d asked her manager to keep track of what Caro was doing, with the hope of someday working together, and, four days after her victory, the director called and invited her to lunch to discuss “North Country.”

“I’ve always had a love affair with directors,” says Theron. In the head-spinning torrent of opportunities that come an Oscar winner’s way, choosing directors was one way to cut through the clutter.

Yet Theron’s choices haven’t been conventional. More than almost any other big star working today, she’s entrusted her stardom to rising female directors, promising talents who haven’t gotten their big breaks. First with “Monster” director Patty Jenkins, then Caro, and also Karyn Kusama, the director of “Girlfight,” who directed Theron as a futuristic action hero-freedom fighter in the upcoming film “Aeon Flux.”

Theron says she likes working with male and female directors, but in signing on with Caro, she was looking to repeat what she’d had with Jenkins -- a creative collaboration. “I wanted to work with someone I could have a partnership with again,” she says. “Patty just [believed] in me so much. People don’t realize how important that is. Confidence really comes from that. I don’t think I could have done ‘North Country’ or ‘Monster’ unless I had two people who said, ‘You’re it. You’re the only person who can do this.’ ”

So far, however, while many of her male directors have drawn out her intoxicating beauty and fragility, Jenkins and Caro have focused alternately on her rage and her grit. “Maybe as another woman -- of course you see the beauty -- but since I’m not trying to date her, I just see another person with strengths and weaknesses,” says Jenkins, who guided Theron into a heartbreaking performance. “I never paid that much attention to how beautiful she was. I just saw her as incredibly powerful. She may have an easier time playing a universal character for another woman who [isn’t] paying attention to her beauty.”

Agrees Caro: “I met her and was so impressed with how connected to real life she is for someone who’s living such an extraordinary life.”

Caro recalls Theron’s first night in Minnesota when she had asked the actress to have dinner with some of the real female miners who’d fought the case. “It’s a very cold and bleak environment. We were all late, so she turned up at the restaurant alone, installed herself at the bar, got to know the barman, made friends” until the real-life litigants arrived.” By the time I got there, they were shrieking with laughter ... It seemed like they knew each other for a very, very long time.”

IT’S A MATTER OF TRUST

THERON is adamant that “North Country” isn’t just a woman’s movie and that a man could have directed the film. But, she notes, “The only difference is that those women [who filed the real-life case] really trusted [Caro] quickly because she was a woman. I could see when we went there, the way they looked at her, with just this incredible hope that this woman would understand them and tell their story truthfully. I don’t know if coming from where they came from they would have felt that with a man.”

Diane Hodge, who worked at the mine for 25 years before and after taking part in the lawsuit, and acted as a consultant on the film, says she “liked the way Niki tells the story. She doesn’t point fingers.”

She added that the film has had a cathartic effect for the female miners who had to fight to be taken seriously.

“We don’t have to be ashamed the movie was made here because sexual harassment happens everywhere. It helped to have someone like Charlize playing [the lead],” adds Hodge, who also played an extra in one of the most harrowing scenes in the film, where Theron’s character tries to address a union full of men, most of whom are hurling crude profanities at her and demanding “Show us your [breasts].” Many of the extras in the hall were played by men from the community, some of whom appeared to be unleashing their true sentiments.

“I think a lot of people -- men and women -- don’t understand how much sexual harassment hurts. The guys in the union meeting scene were appalled to see people yelling at Charlize.” Hodge says. Afterward, they “came up to me and said, ‘I can’t believe men talked to you girls that way.’ ”

When audiences see Theron’s character being abused, Hodge predicts, “they’re going to know how it feels.”