Northfork, the new film from the Polish Brothers, is an ephemeral piece of work. It's an accumulation of ideas and themes and images that feel as if their cohesion was almost an accident; that the filmmakers had these fleeting little notions and concepts and they followed their instinct and plucked them out of whatever creative realm they were born from and turned them into a movie.

The lesson, then, would be this: trust your instincts. Northfolk is an astounding tale that is set in on earth but seems to exist a few steps north of reality. It takes place in 1955, and it's title is the name of the small Montana town in which it takes place, a town which is about to be flooded to make way for a new hydroelectric dam. An Evacuation Committee is in charge of making sure all the remaining citizens are sent on their way to higher ground. Some of the people, however, don't want to go.

This antediluvian storyline runs parallel to another one, in which a little boy (newcomer Duel Farnes), abandoned by his adopted parents, lays dying in bed, under the care of the local priest, Father Harlan (Nick Nolte). In his fevered state begins to see angels. These aren't traditional angles, though; they have no wings or halos, at least not anymore. Instead, they have cowboy hats and wigs and safety pins and wooden hands. There are four of them: Cup Of Tea (Robin Sachs), Happy (Anthony Edwards), Flower Hercules (Darryl Hannah) and Clod (Ben Foster). They live in a house on the Montana plains, watched over by a strange dog that stronly resembles the elephants Salvador Dali was fond of drawing. The boy tries to convince him that he is the lost member of their flock, and indeed, he has scars on his back where wings may have once been removed.

But it is only a dream, and in reality he is still dying, just like the rest of the town. The overall theme of the movie seems to be death, and how to handle it. Plenty of folks are hanging on for dear life; one man has nailed his feet to his front porch, and another has turned his house into an ark. The Evacuation Committee do their best to get these stragglers to safety, often to no avail. Two of them, a father and son team played by James Woods and Mark Polish, are also torn over whether or not they should dig up their dead matriarch and take her with them when they leave.

The story is based loosely on true events; many small Midwestern towns were flooded as hydroelectric power became prevalent. Mark and Michael Polish have taken the idea and used it as the basis for an ascent into magical realism, a sort of American fairy tale. The script, written by both brothers (echoing the Coens, Michael gets directing credit, but one senses that their films are joint efforts), is slow and contemplative, and full of equal parts melancholy and melancholic humor. But it is in the images that the film truly lifts off (so to speak), from the film's first shot, in which a coffin surfaces in a vast body of water, to the huge ark propped up on the countryside. My favorite occurs early on; Nolte preaches to his congregation in a chapel that is missing a back wall, and a heard of livestock can be glimpsed running across the windswept plains behind him as he speaks.

As you watch the film, keep in mind that everything you see is real. There are no computer enhancements or trick photography. The widescreen cinematography by M. David Mullen, which renders the entire film in bleached shades of gray, is by itself a special effect. I've been astonished quite a bit lately by visuals in films, ranging from the editing of The Hulk to the one continuous shot of Russian Ark; continuing that trend, the Polish brothers have supplied us with images here that I'll never forget. Some critics who tend to become caustic at the slightest hint of symbolism might bandy about terms like 'trite' or 'heavy-handed,' but I'd suggest that such comments are automatically invalidated by the film's sincerity.

Aside from Nolte (who both brothers acted with in The Good Thief) and Woods (who also produced), the cast includes Kyle MacLachlan, Claire Forlani and Peter Coyote, among others. There are no flashy roles, and many of the parts are merely walk-ons that blend in with the muted scenery. This was clearly a labor of love for the cast, and for everyone else involved, and it shows. The budget was less than two million; somehow, the Polish Brothers and their crew used it to make something that feels like it has no limits.