Love in the Time of Brexit
God's Own Country is a rather bleak and rough landscape. So are the people living there. Few words and restraint to display feelings. John Saxby (Josh O'Connor) is one of them. He likes to binge drink. Actually the film starts with him vomiting after another trip to the city. John lives with his grandmother (Gemma Jones) and his father (Ian Hart). Father had a stroke and is not a help. Therefore they look for a farmhelp for the lambing season and get Gheorghe from Romania.
Jack has difficulty to express feelings, even to admit that he has any. Booze in the pub and casual sex with with men is enough for him.
Farmhand Gheorghe is emotionally more advanced than Jack. He fast decodes Jack's behaviour. With Gheorghe Jack learns for the first time that there is a difference between having sex and making love. Feelings sprout in him and he starts to become a more responsible person. However, to become completely mature, he needs to experience loss. Having realized that he nothing on his own, he starts to take responsiblity for the farm and his own life. (I wish them luck. It won't be easy for the two men to run a farm in God's Own Country.)
This film has often been compared to Brokeback Mountain, which might be true up to a certain point, but here we have a blunt agricultural realism that at times was too much for my sensitive urban mind. Also the intimacy between the two men is not as soft brushed as Brokeback Mountain. It's more in the tradition of British social realism. The sky has surprisngly many shades of grey, the sun is a rare sight, yet they describe it as beautiful.
The script doesn't discuss the same-sex issue. This makes it a strong script.Instead there is focus on the coming of age aspect, avoiding trite treatment of a plot that has been told before.
9/10
God's Own Country is a rather bleak and rough landscape. So are the people living there. Few words and restraint to display feelings. John Saxby (Josh O'Connor) is one of them. He likes to binge drink. Actually the film starts with him vomiting after another trip to the city. John lives with his grandmother (Gemma Jones) and his father (Ian Hart). Father had a stroke and is not a help. Therefore they look for a farmhelp for the lambing season and get Gheorghe from Romania.
Jack has difficulty to express feelings, even to admit that he has any. Booze in the pub and casual sex with with men is enough for him.
Farmhand Gheorghe is emotionally more advanced than Jack. He fast decodes Jack's behaviour. With Gheorghe Jack learns for the first time that there is a difference between having sex and making love. Feelings sprout in him and he starts to become a more responsible person. However, to become completely mature, he needs to experience loss. Having realized that he nothing on his own, he starts to take responsiblity for the farm and his own life. (I wish them luck. It won't be easy for the two men to run a farm in God's Own Country.)
This film has often been compared to Brokeback Mountain, which might be true up to a certain point, but here we have a blunt agricultural realism that at times was too much for my sensitive urban mind. Also the intimacy between the two men is not as soft brushed as Brokeback Mountain. It's more in the tradition of British social realism. The sky has surprisngly many shades of grey, the sun is a rare sight, yet they describe it as beautiful.
The script doesn't discuss the same-sex issue. This makes it a strong script.Instead there is focus on the coming of age aspect, avoiding trite treatment of a plot that has been told before.
9/10
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