The rage and exhaustion within Sandra (Thandiwe Newton), the protagonist of God’s Country, is palpable and only grows over the course of co-writer/director Julian Higgins’s debut feature. By the end, it could be any number of things that spark a decision of both recklessness and finality – one that we fully comprehend but anticipate with our entire stomach descending to somewhere in our intestines. The woman has already lost her mother, for whom she cared tirelessly during the final months, and had to uproot her life and move from New Orleans to a stark, snow-swept landscape far north of the Pelican State. Now, she quarrels with her dismissive co-workers, her suspicious neighbors, and the unhelpful and often obstructive local police.
Sandra is a Black woman living in an almost homogeneously white part of the United States. Some degree of racialist suspicion seems to prompt a pair of brothers (Joris Jarsky and Jefferson White) to prod Sandra’s every last nerve, first by parking their pickup truck on her family’s property, where just days ago she laid the cremated remains of her late mother to rest; and then with a strange behavior that can only be attributed to imbalanced “macho men” with something to prove within their unhinged power dynamic. The younger of the brothers seems especially intent upon harassing Sandra to the point of inciting a violent reaction, and meanwhile, they both stare at her with cold, dead eyes.
Higgins is clearly aiming for a film that operates almost as a thriller. The tension between Sandra and the two men is palpable and edgy, and Newton’s performance has been carefully perched between the headstrong stoic heroine, whose anger could explode into action at any moment, and a woman trying to juggle these troubles with her own grief. As part of the plot involving these men, the local acting Sheriff (Jeremy Bobb) appears to be sympathetic toward Sandra’s problems. Since their threats fall just beneath the line of police intervention, there doesn’t seem to be anything the man can do – at least, it seems that way. Sandra has her doubts, for good reason: She was a police officer back in New Orleans and fully understands how close-knit cops work and think.
The film works better as a simple character study of a woman rubbing up against the small town establishment in ways that ruffle feathers, such as a fight to hire another person of color onto the faculty of the university where she teaches English and literature. The head of her department, a basically nice guy named Arthur (Kai Lennox), seems unreasonably nervous and suspicious in his own toxic way about the “message” that will be sent if such a hire is made. Talk of affirmative action and the way the world works is a barely opaque perspective into his worldview, and the pressure (as well as the inevitable outcome of this plot point) is too much for Sandra, especially in the face of another scandal that will undoubtedly be swept under the rug.
The film’s two plots do not coalesce, but they do work well to say something about Sandra and the world in which she has found herself. The final scene presents a decisive choice, which might rewrite what we know about this character. The more it swirls around the head, though, the more convincing and within character it is. That’s the scary part.
Photo courtesy of IFC Films
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