Movie Review: God's Country

 

Michael's Movie Grade: A+

A simply wonderful film.

A woman moves to a small town and finds hunters parking on her property. She tells them multiple times not to park there, but they keep parking there. As this goes on, it ends up going so far as to make her not feel safe in her own home. In many ways this plot sounds like a fairly standard suspense movie, but it is anything but. In the hands of director and co-writer Julian Higgins (with her first feature film since 2004) this movie becomes so much more. This film takes a hard look at such subjects as racism, sexual harassment, remaining silent about injustice, loss of loved ones and more. It looks at these subjects in such an intelligent and thought-provoking way that it gives you much to think about once you leave the theater. Yet miraculously none of these feels forced into the movie but seems to flow naturally from the story and characters. Speaking about characters, the main character here is fantastic. I love how even though this movie takes her side on many of the issues, she is not treated as a perfect character, in fact far from it. There are times when we are left wondering if the actions, she takes are morally correct. Whether or not we should stand behind these actions or very them as wrong acts by a good person pushed too far is completely up to the viewer and with that I can see many people having very different takes on the same scene with this film and that is a sign of great art. Yet even if we do not agree with her actions, she still never becomes too unlikable to care about her and be invested in what happens to her. Even if this film is not a typically suspense film, the suspense scenes here work very well. This is not a fast paced movie, but the slower pace fully works to its advantage. The slower pace creates a real sense of atmosphere and dread, that makes the suspenseful moments all the more effective. While at first this movie may seem too slow to some, as the film goes on it stops feeling slow. This is not because the pace picks up (in fact the pace remains slow throughout), but because you get so invested in the story you don't notice the slow pace anymore. This movie is also helped but an incredible performance by Thandiwe Newton. She brings an incredible amount of humanity and power to this role. This may be the finest role yet in her career.

A must see.