Film: God's Own Country
Just been to see God's Own Country in the cinema. It's a local production, all filmed within a few miles of Bradford and its rooted in the moors and farms of the place. Maybe I'm biased because its become my home, and lived half my life here now, but that first and foremost had drawn me to see it.
I've seen a review that described it as a British Brokeback Mountain. Having also seen that film I don't really agree, because while it's about two farm workers who fall for each other that is basically where the similarities end.
21st century rural Yorkshire is not the American midwest of the 1950/60s. Nor is it a film about hiding a relationship from society or about discovering sexuality or even coming out.
Johnny Saxby is basically running a small upland sheep and cattle farm on his own, although he lives there with his elderly gran, and his father who'd worked himself into the ground running the place and is recovering from a stroke. He can't see any future for himself beyond the farm, his friends are off living their lives and he's trapped. He also doesn't want to leave. So he drinks too much, smokes too much and has comitment free and emotionally disconnected sex, because he feels hopeless about his future. Basically he's got a lot problems, some of which are of his own making, but precisely none of them are the fact he is gay.
It is a quiet film, the dialogue often sparse, the landscape and emotions are raw. You feel the lowkey desperation, the little every tragedies and it feels real. You don't know where life if about to take any of them, and there are times when it seems that some things are broken beyond repair.
And while the film is about Johnny and Gheorghe, a Romanian farmworker who has come to help over the lambing season, developing relationship is also about John's relationship with his father, own inability ask for help, the realities of running a small upland farm and the feeling of being trapped by responsibilies that you both want and resent at the same time. Its the disconnect between the rural and the urban, seen when John talks to his old school friends who'd left for college and university.
Perhaps the over arching theme is then simply one of finding hope for the future again and of realising that needing people, that wanting help and reassurance doesn't mean you're a failure.
The film is fifteen rated and i will say now its not an inflated rate due to it being a same sex relationship. There are reasonably graphic sexual scenes and nudity, but they don't feel forced in, like they are their for the audiences titilation, rather they are part of the progression of a relationship, in the same way as how they look and talk to each other changes with growing understanding.
As i said before I am probably very biased as is a local production, but it has won awards, and if you can see it I really do recommend it.
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I've seen a review that described it as a British Brokeback Mountain. Having also seen that film I don't really agree, because while it's about two farm workers who fall for each other that is basically where the similarities end.
21st century rural Yorkshire is not the American midwest of the 1950/60s. Nor is it a film about hiding a relationship from society or about discovering sexuality or even coming out.
Johnny Saxby is basically running a small upland sheep and cattle farm on his own, although he lives there with his elderly gran, and his father who'd worked himself into the ground running the place and is recovering from a stroke. He can't see any future for himself beyond the farm, his friends are off living their lives and he's trapped. He also doesn't want to leave. So he drinks too much, smokes too much and has comitment free and emotionally disconnected sex, because he feels hopeless about his future. Basically he's got a lot problems, some of which are of his own making, but precisely none of them are the fact he is gay.
It is a quiet film, the dialogue often sparse, the landscape and emotions are raw. You feel the lowkey desperation, the little every tragedies and it feels real. You don't know where life if about to take any of them, and there are times when it seems that some things are broken beyond repair.
And while the film is about Johnny and Gheorghe, a Romanian farmworker who has come to help over the lambing season, developing relationship is also about John's relationship with his father, own inability ask for help, the realities of running a small upland farm and the feeling of being trapped by responsibilies that you both want and resent at the same time. Its the disconnect between the rural and the urban, seen when John talks to his old school friends who'd left for college and university.
Perhaps the over arching theme is then simply one of finding hope for the future again and of realising that needing people, that wanting help and reassurance doesn't mean you're a failure.
The film is fifteen rated and i will say now its not an inflated rate due to it being a same sex relationship. There are reasonably graphic sexual scenes and nudity, but they don't feel forced in, like they are their for the audiences titilation, rather they are part of the progression of a relationship, in the same way as how they look and talk to each other changes with growing understanding.
As i said before I am probably very biased as is a local production, but it has won awards, and if you can see it I really do recommend it.
Posted via DraftCraft app