Mood: rough, hopeful, loving, warm, sensual, explicit, loneliness, closeness – yes this piece is too multi-layered to describe and talk about its themes with just a few words; it’s almost like a trifle of human emotions.
God’s Own Country is a film that truly showcases Josh O’Conner’s acting prowess and colossal chameleon skills. From the southern gentleman, we’re used to seeing him to the rough-and-ready northerner in this picture, he can do it all. It’s part of the straight hat-trick of festival successes for him from 2017 through 2018 with Only You to 2019 and Hope Gap.
As Francis Lee’s directorial feature debut makes its network premiere on Channel 4 on Monday the 11th of November at 23:10 pm, mass audiences would get to marvel his stunning masterpiece on the small screen. It helps to really understand and appreciate this drama to know that it’s actually semi-autobiographical. Lee was on a similar to his protagonist’s cross-path in his life and had to decide whether to keep supporting his family’s farm or go to drama school. His personal experiences lie behind his painstakingly detailed process and he made sure to source every prop, costume and set dressing material from local suppliers. He also went to some serious lengths to achieve credible performances; there is method and there is this method:
“I got the boys working on farms, I insisted they do shifts. Josh in particular would do 10 or 12 hours, and he would do everything. He did birthing lambs, he did medicating, he did stuff with cows, he rebuilt drystone walls, he mucked out. It was very important for me to have authenticity in the actions of the farming, because I knew I would never have a stunt or a hand double. And I also wanted him and Alec to get that landscape into their bones. I wanted them to feel cold, wet and tired, to ache and be a bit miserable. To know what it feels like to do that work.”
O’Conner plays Johnny, a Yorkshire lad, who lives and maintains the family farm with his dad (Martin) and nan (Deirdre). With his father, having gone through a stroke, and his grandmother being incapacitated at her old age, he has to run the farm mostly by himself and the work is not only physically challenging but due to its monotonous and isolated nature, it’s soul-draining too. His only entertainment and form of escapism, from his mundane day-to-day, consists of hard-drinking and casual carnal interactions with random men.
Johnny’s world gets turned upside down and turned much brighter at the same time, when an attractive young Romanian farmer, Gheorghe, (portrayed by Alec Secăreanu) moves to stay at the family’s caravan and starts working closely with him as he struggles to manage the heavy workload on his own. Francis Lee wanted to materialise this change and use the power of the elements to distinguish the different parts:
“The wind was also very important to me. It was very carefully orchestrated and each character has a very specific wind about him. Especially Gheorghe. When he comes he brings a very specific sound with him. And when he leaves, he leaves that sound as an echo of his presence; something that has changed.”
Gheorghe is often being insulted by Johnny, who calls him a “gyppo” or a “gypsy”, which is interesting now in the context of Brexit. However, this aggression seems to be simply a cover for his true feelings, maybe even an outlet for his repressed exasperation about being stuck at the farm. Despite Gheorghe being most likely perceived by the many xenophobic locals as the inferior migrant, he’s the one that teaches Johnny, who’s only used to brief and emotionless sexual encounters, how to love and how to build a relationship.
Intimately following the couple on their journey of self-discovery is what makes this film so very special. The wild but beguiling Yorkshire landscape and intense camera angles mimic their blossoming romance and feral and untamed passion for each other. It is also not a saccharine Hollywood-pizzas inflated tear-jerker. It is a real story, about real people, who have to overcome the harsh environment they live in, who need to learn to let others in, but most of all have to fully accept themselves.
There is a reason for every creative decision and who to better explain all the hidden symbolism in the feature, than the director himself:
“We crafted the sound from scratch. I knew I didn’t want a film with a heavy score in terms of music, so I wanted to build the soundtrack of the film from layers and layers of natural sound. I am a huge fan of hidden metaphor so the bird sounds, for example, are very specifically placed because of what they mean to me. We have swallows that come at critical points in the film; they are migrating birds, they mate for life, so are very significant in that sense. There are curlews, which are the harbingers of spring, of change, of rebirth.”
All in all, it’s a triumph because it normalises something that should have been acknowledged a long time ago and by making all the visuals more unapologetically explicit than previously seen, it just reminds us that there are more options to picture-perfect heterosexual scenes. In this world, the focus is on personal relationships, not on homophobia, which is a fresh take on the narrative too. God’s Own Country is beautiful and profoundly honest.