There’s very little music in God’s Own Country. There’s hardly even any talking. Francis Lee’s debut feature is one defined by incidental sounds: the sound of rain lashing against the walls of a flimsy caravan, of goats bleating as they’re born into the world, and of men having sex in public bathrooms. It’s a drama small in scale, taking place in Yorkshire farmlands, which manages to speak volumes about love and relationships without needing to rely on a swelling score or expositional dialogue.
In plot summary, the film resembles Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain (2005). Johnny Saxby (Josh O’Connor) is a surly, overworked young man who takes care of the family farm while his father’s health deteriorates. He disappoints his father by going out and getting hammered at night (we first see him throwing up in the toilet one morning after) and struggling to work during the day.
This changes when Gheorghe (Alec Secareanu) arrives, a handsome Romanian looking for work and a place to stay. The two of them go out to work a few nights in a high paddock, sleeping alongside each other in barn sheds and eating instant noodles in silence by the fire. A romance blooms, aggressively, which they largely have to keep secret.
Where this film differs from Lee’s tragic love story (and asserts itself as superior, in my opinion) is that secrecy and forbidden love don’t define the narrative, nor does its score and dialogue inflate the intimate drama the way Lee’s film does. Instead, as Johnny’s father suffers a stroke and Gheorghe stays at the ranch a little longer, the film concerns itself with Johnny’s journey towards healing, and it does this in remarkably understated ways.
Largely silent, the images are profoundly cinematic. Some visual symbols are admittedly a little on the nose – a caged bird hopping from one side of its prison to the other, for example – but others, including a scene in which Gheorghe breathes life into a newborn lamb, or Joshua James Richards’ muted cinematography as the camera looks over the sprawling countryside, show that this film is a truly cinematic story, unconcerned with telling the audience how to think and feel.
Befitting the understated approach, both O’Connor’s and Secareanu’s performances are intensely personal and trust to the director that audiences will understand how they feel. O’Connor broods and pushes Scareanu’s small acts of kindness away, but Scareanu’s graceful patience is beautiful to watch, a kind of antidote to O’Connor’s embittered performance.
The film received a spontaneous applause in the media screening I attended, which rarely happens, if ever, but I think it’s a fine way to end my recommendation for this unexpected, independent gem.
– Tom
Tom Bensley is a freelance writer in Melbourne who reviews anything he attends, watches or reads. It’s a compulsion, really. Follow him @TomAliceBensley.
God’s Own Country will be released in cinemas 31 August 2017.
