God's Own Country

seen on 2 September 2017

Francis Lee wrote and directed this, his first feature film, with Josh O'Connor as Johnny Saxby, Alec Secareanu as Gheorghe Ionescu, Ian Hart s Martin Saxby (Johnny's father) and Gemma Jones as Deirdre Saxby (Johnny's grandmother).

Johnny, not entirely willing to take on the onerous responsibility of the Yorkshire farm run by his now ailing father, is a young man who drowns his sorrows in the pub and takes advantage of brief impersonal sexual encounters with men where he can. The arrival of Gheorghe, a Romanian farm worker, to help with the lambing season at first increases the young man's resentment, though the newcomer is determined to make the best of the less than welcoming environment. His evident capability earns him a wary respect, but when the two young men are sent up to the high fields to repair a drystone wall and look after a small flock of sheep, Johnny's latent aggression soon turns to his typical almost incoherent desire for sexual release. After their first frantic encounter Gheorghe expects a more tender response - in short, a proper relationship rather than mere animal passion. Johnny obviously has a good deal of growing up to do.

The power of this film lies in its excellent performances and in Lee's insight into the unremitting hard work of farm life on a Yorkshire smallholding (he grew up on just such a farm). The weather is bleak, the tasks cannot be safely delayed, the prospects are poor. Johnny cannot prosper while he is filled with resentment and it all shows in his hunched shoulders and miserable expression. Only when Gheorghe shows a more patient and committed approach to the work at hand does he begin to see a more hopeful side to his life - a rare smile breaks out as he watches Gheorghe skin a dead lamb in order to cover an orphaned one with the pelt and thus encourage the mother ewe to accept the stranger.

The Saxbys are taciturn folk, and the father and grandmother apparently unsparing in their criticisms of Johnny, though as he finally takes some responsibility willingly his father shows small signs of approval. Gheorghe is quiet, but determined. Much of the narrative is therefore conveyed by gestures and facial expressions, and by the close observation of the young men at work; the cinematography (Joshua James Richards) is superb at bringing out the rugged nature of the environment without sentimentalising it in any way. Tenderness and responsiveness are thus seen to be vital not only in personal relationships but also in relation to the natural world even in its (semi-)tamed farming guise. 

It's a beautifully crafted film with a powerful sense of place and a story well worth telling.