God's Own Country (2017)

Film: God's Own Country (2017)
Stars: Josh O'Connor, Alec Secarneau, Ian Hart, Gemma Jones
Director: Francis Lee
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

Few films affect me quite as much as Brokeback Mountain.  It's still one of the best movies ever made, in my opinion-a classic love story that is, yes, perhaps the first and best example of a gay prestige film.  While films like Carol and Moonlight have come after it, I'd argue that few movies have actually followed in its footsteps...that is, until God's Own Country.  The film, centered around a young man in Yorkshire struggling with his sexuality is hard to imagine existing without Brokeback-its story beats are too familiar.  And yet, when it does take its moments to strike out on its own, giving us unique characters in the film's two male leads, as well as some story beats not available to the period drama of Brokeback, it does so with terrific clarity and power, proving that while it might not exist without its cowboy predecessor, by the movie's end it can stand aside it as a masterful look at forbidden romance.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie centers upon Johnny (O'Connor), a farmer's son who spends most of his day arguing with his father (Hart) and grandmother (Jones), and his nights are filled with excessive drinking (to the point where it's a recurring theme of him waking up throwing up in a toilet), and when the opportunity arises, having casual sex with young men that are passing through the village (who all look like background players in The Book of Mormon, in perhaps a bit of a nod to gay cliche).  Johnny has no designs on a better life for himself, and assumes this is about as good as it's going to get; even the sex he enjoys with these young men is rough, impersonal, and brief, performed in bathroom stalls without even the exchange of names or the anticipation of it happening more than once.  That is, this is his worldview until Johnny's father submits for a temporary farmhand to help with the lambing season, and he meets Georghe (Secarneau), a Romanian man who is passing through town and needs the work.

The love story that blossoms between them is one that requires you to realize that movies don't need to spell out everything a character is thinking.  It's rare that a movie can make a romantic drama about two introverts work without it seeming boring or uninterested.  The intimacies that spring out from the story are perhaps the best aspects of the film.  Josh O'Connor is so wonderful first as someone totally detached from this man, seeing him at best as a weeklong source of sex, and nothing more.  Instead, Georghe shows Johnny that sex can be intimate, and perhaps for the first time in Johnny's life he experiences something akin to tenderness.  There's a beautiful scene where the two are eating with his grandmother, and she leaves the room, and Johnny hugs Georghe from behind, completely over-eager but with the glee of a man having a boyfriend for the first time.  I thought it was so specific and true-the way that the performance informs first love with a man who wasn't allowed to experience this at the same time as heterosexual man of his age would have shows a deeper understanding of what the closet deprives LGBT people of experiencing.  This level of intimacy wasn't available to the same degree in Brokeback due to the period of that film (in the timeline of the movie) and the sex scenes weren't as graphic (in this case, more to do with when the actual film was lensed in real-life).

The movie is hard not to love if you invest in this romantic couple, which I did.  The side characters are a small list, but here Lee takes great care.  Ian Hart is terrific as a man who is hard and slowly watching his years of strength leave his body, and comes to terms that he will need to rely upon the man he's viewed as a child all of his life to be his breadwinner and caretaker.  There's a great moment late in the film where Hart has to be bathed after a stroke, and he thanks Johnny for taking care of him; it's a tricky moment, because in most films this would ring hollow for the character or seem saccharine, but Lee frames it well by only having Hart have his thank you, with Johnny too shocked to make it a "music swelling" sort of scene.  Rounding out the cast is Gemma Jones, playing Johnny's knowing grandmother.  Again, the quiet moments are where we find this character, like when she finds a condom on the floor of the bed (though does that mean they were having safe sex when they were with the lambs, because that feels really inconsistent...perhaps the biggest inconsistency in the entire film, at least from my gay man's eyes)-she flushes it down the toilet without a word.  Not a confrontation, not a knowing glance, but just confirming something we assume that she's long-suspected about Johnny.  If this is the "you don't go up there to fish" scene, it's informed by reality: Alma knew that she could find another life and another man, but Gemma's Deidre is aware that this life, this grandson, is all she has in the world and there are no other options but to accept him.

I could go on and on (the power dynamic shifting from old to young is nearly as interesting as the love story itself), but I think I'll stop there.  If you get a chance, this is well worth the ticket price-I highly recommend catching it (or adding it promptly to the Netflix queue).