God’s Country

Grade: A-

In the winter months, I love watching movies like Nebraska and The Ice Storm. They are still and reflective, with lots to unpack – and I never have trouble feeling the chill of the settings and seasons. Writer/director Julian Higgins’s film God’s Country (recently in select theaters, available now to stream) is almost at the level of the aforementioned two. It takes place among the snow-capped mountains and quiet small towns of western Montana, and made me feel like I was there. The sound design is unparalleled. Our senses are awakened and drawn in by the wind, footsteps in the snow, and plink-plink-plink of frozen rain.

The only cast member I recognized was our star, Thandiwe Newton. She has been a solid, mostly supporting actress since 1991, quietly doing her thing in the background in films like Interview With the Vampire, Gridlock’d, Mission: Impossible II, Crash, The Pursuit of Happyness, and Oliver Stone’s W. She has been working toward a performance like this her whole career. I think she is in every scene in God’s Country, and carries the movie, even when we don’t always like her. Listen to her consonants. The command she has of the language is a master-class in and of itself.

It’s apropos that her character (Sandra) is an English composition/public speaking professor at the local university. She lives by herself amongst the mountains and canyons, and returns home one day to find a red truck parked on her property. She leaves a note on the windshield asking them to park somewhere else. They still come the next day – two hunters, who say that her property is the best jumping-off point for hunting in the area, and “not to worry, we’ll park far away, we’ll be out of your hair, etc.”

I won’t get into how this situation escalates or plays out, but one of the places it leads to is one of the movie’s best scenes – a beautiful tender moment in a church, where two adversaries find common ground, even if just for a minute. This isn’t the only plotline. A few other stories weave in and out, and each one feels fleshed out with lots to offer. God’s Country touches on #metoo type harassment, there’s a subplot about pushing for ethnic diversity in the workplace, and we find out what Sandra used to do professionally, why she quit, and why she relocated from her hometown of New Orleans.

I mentioned earlier that we don’t always like or root for Newton’s character. By the end of the film, there are no heroes. Nobody we see here is completely innocent. I found myself eventually seeing where everyone was coming from at different times. I have no idea what the message or moral is (not to mention what happens next in the story). All I know is I was thoroughly engaged in what I saw; I rarely got the urge to tap the screen to check how far along I was. God’s Country is a rich, absorbing movie – one of the year’s best.

Grade: A-