God's Country

 

In Julian Higgins' chilling God's Country, Thandie Newton plays a Black university professor in Montana, battling the cold and isolation, both environmental and human, as tensions between Newton's Sandra and local toughs (Joris Jarsky and Jefferson White) slowly escalate to an inevitable explosion.

Higgins and his co-writer Shaye Ogbonna avoid stark intemperance and violent flare ups. Rather they depict the escalation with more subtle though, to my mind, equally dramatic elements.

Two scenes are particularly important -- Sandra's encounter with one of her tormentors (Jarsky) on a Sunday in the back pew of his family church. The meeting first suggests a possible detente but suddenly shifts to something much less hopeful.

The second scene is a Christmas party for which Sandra has donned a beautiful black stappy dress, which she wears with noticeable discomfort. The dress seems out of place in the forbidding, near Arctic Northwest canyons. Is it emblematic of her displacement? Is she unaware? Trying too hard to be liked? It suggests something is going on inside that Sandra herself isn't aware of.

Newton's performance is a study in controlled rage and despair, the roots of which are revealed during the faculty Christmas party. Knowing her back story helps the audience understand why what may at first appear to be a Straw Dogs (1971) kind of town / gown dispute is potentially much more devastating and damning.