Sundance Review: Thandiwe Newton In ‘God’s Country’
deadline.comThandiwe Newton, as she now spells her first name, finally gets a role she can really sink her teeth into with God’s Country, a disturbing, unusually class-and-race-conscious modern Western that paints a pretty despairing view of human relations in red state America.
Methodically paced and dominated by negative emotions all around, director/co-writer Julian Higgins takes his own sweet time exploring the troubling, unfriendly mindsets on both sides of the fence.
Fences, in fact, would have been a very apt title for this quietly simmering study of people who bring little but ill-will to the table.Higgins must have a thing about academics and trespassing; his 2004 debut feature Mending Wall dealt with conflicts in a small New England town, while his 2015 short Winter Light (apologies to Ingmar Bergman) centered on a battle between a college professor and two hunters intruding on his property.
In his new film, which is set in a mountainous, sparsely populated Western state, no dialogue is heard for the first eight minutes, which effectively foreshadows the clenched resentments and ill-will that come to dominate the drama.
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