#The North Water Offers A Baptism Of Blood And A Bearish Colin Farrell

Fresh reports indicate that Hollywood studios and streamers are now looking for more “aspirational content,” meaning they want to show people “blue skies” as an antidote to the pandemic. It’s understandable that audiences would want to escape from reality more or have something to boost their spirits and inspire them during these tough times. But in the middle of a demanding week, at the outset of a free AMC+ trial subscription, I began watching “The North Water” and soon latched onto it as a different kind of comfort food, perhaps the unlikeliest beacon of life-affirming entertainment.

Written and directed by Andrew Haigh, based on a novel by Ian McGuire, “The North Water” begins with a quote from Arthur Schopenhauer, the philosophical pessimist. “The world is hell, and men are both the tormented souls and the devils within it.”

With episode titles like, “We Men Are Wretched Things,” “The Devils of the Earth,” and “To Live Is to Suffer,” this is not, on the surface, a show that would seem uplifting in any way. Patrick Sumner, the disgraced doctor played by O’Connell, doesn’t have the same cheery bedside manner that Ted Lasso does.

To Sumner, the men of the “Volunteer” (and they are all men, there are few women on this show) are nothing more than bodies for him to examine. “It is not my task to judge, soothe, or befriend them,” he writes in his journal. “I am a medical man… In my current state, I have very little comfort to give.”

The camera tags along with him as he floats through the streets, clinically detached, numbed by his own moral failures and an uncaring world. Contrast him with the bearded, burly figure of Henry Drax, who assaults life: sending up geysers of red mist, showering himself and his shipmates in whale’s blood. (A scene with a different animal later recalls one shared moment in “The Revenant,” “The Empire Strikes Back,” and Akira Kurosawa’s “Dersu Uzala.”)

Danish actor Roland Møller makes an impression as the soulful Otto. When Sumner meets a missionary (Peter Mullan), his other white-bearded guardian angel speaks of converting people. “My task,” he says, “is to help them grow up… To develop their souls, make them self-aware.”

As I watched “The North Water,” I found myself doing that a little. Improbable as it might seem, I drew strength from this survival journey, which meets the world’s pitiless gaze, sees the caged beast in all of us, and offers a glimmer of redemption on the other side.