God's Own Country

[Secular Sanity]

I watched "God’s Own Country" the other night. I learned a few things about myself. There’s a scene where his grandmother finds a condom. I kept expecting either his grandmother or father to react in some homophobic way. I kept expecting something like that to happen throughout the film. At the end, there’s a reunion scene where they’re embracing each other in a work yard. I was afraid for them and thought, 'Okay this is it.' This is where they’re going to get caught, and maybe beat up, but it never happened.

The director, Francis Lee, said that lots of people felt this way. They thought it wasn’t an honest representation of the area because they were never confronted by homophobes. He said that when big liberal people see it, they ask, 'How realistic is it that two homosexuals can live in a rural community and not be victimized?' But he’s from West Yorkshire and said that he has never been confronted or attacked because of his sexuality. He said that you can’t demonize people like that. Most people there never even bat an eye.

The sex scenes were hard to watch. At first, they were rough and forceful. It looked like only one of them was having a good time. I thought, 'Well, maybe two men (both strong), plays out differently.' But the director said that he used the sex scenes to depict the beginnings of a transformation.

"I have this character Johnny, who is not articulate. He doesn’t really speak. And he certainly doesn’t speak about how he feels. But I want to see some beginnings of a transformation in him from knowing Gheorghe. The way that I could eloquently depict that is by showing how he has sex. So the first time you see him having sex is in the back of that cattle trailer with that lad. And it’s just bang bang, he’s not interested in getting to know him. It’s just do it, get on, move on. That visually tells me exactly where that guy is at. Who he is. What he is about. And then to show that shift, and to show how Gheorge teaches him about intimacy, pleasure, time, tenderness, I thought was an incredibly powerful, visual way of depicting how someone can shift very subtly emotionally. These are not middle class people who go home and say, ‘I’m feeling sad because I am in love. I don’t know if I can express myself.’ Or read poems. That doesn’t happen. They’re too tired from working. That’s why those scenes are in there. To show that arc and to show that emotional change."

He did a great job. I loved it!

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/q1YAhyU6-tA

[Leigha]

Thanks for the review, I think I’ll check it out. Sounds interesting!

[C C]

. . . The director, Francis Lee, said that lots of people felt this way. They thought it wasn’t an honest representation of the area because they were never confronted by homophobes. He said that when big liberal people see it, they ask, 'How realistic is it that two homosexuals can live in a rural community and not be victimized?' But he’s from West Yorkshire and said that he has never been confronted or attacked because of his sexuality. He said that you can’t demonize people like that. Most people there never even bat an eye.

The UK entertainment industry seems to depict rural and small town communities in a better (if not also more accurate) light than Hollywood does. I guess that's why the former still has TV programming with country-ish settings like "Doc Martin" and whatever other current items I can't think of at the moment.

Initially I felt that a television show set in the 1950s like Grantchester was being wildly anachronistic (among other things) in the way it depicted a vicar reacting to a curate's homosexuality in either a supportive or "who cares?" way. But I don't know, given how so many Roman-style organized churches seem to have harbored and protected clergymen over the decades and centuries, whose sexual tastes were criminally perverse rather than mere orientations involving adults, maybe it's not as far-fetched after all. If a bygone-era clergyman was capable of keeping it quiet from the legal system that another clergyman was buggering the altar tykes, then why even blink when realizing another one is gay? (Which is not to say that this scenario applied to Sidney Chambers -- it didn't.) 

The sex scenes were hard to watch. At first, they were rough and forceful. It looked like only one of them was having a good time. I thought, 'Well, maybe two men (both strong), plays out differently.' But the director said that he used the sex scenes to depict the beginnings of a transformation.

If there's an actual purpose for sex scenes, then I can understand. But usually I find movie and TV sex boring, like those retro kids in the old days that hated precious film time being consumed by the Big Kiss scene in censorship days (although I guess they were as much grossed out by it as bored by it). For whatever reason I don't encounter much rough gay sex in movies. But I am glad to see a lot of cable shows finally balancing out the lesbian sex (that's actually soft pornographic material to entice the guys to watch) with the rough-style gay activity instead of those tame affection, kissing, and fellatio scenes between men they once had (as if they were afraid the audience couldn't handle the other).

But I'm still bored. If they went back to censorship of everybody having graphic sex it wouldn't bother me a bit due to their having to focus more on writing better stories rather than relying on sensationalistic filler. The boring buckets of gore and guts and severed limbs can go, also -- I can infer what's going on in the missing footage just as much I could infer what was going on in the old movies and shows in terms of sex and violence.

[Secular Sanity]

That’s funny that you said that because I just finished watching that 1962 film, Lolita. I’ve been watching it on and off for the past three days. I didn’t read the book but I guess the film was supposed to be a comedy-drama. It wasn’t funny at all, though. What was funny, not funny ha-ha, but odd, was an attempt at humor in a film about Hebephilia. She was 12 in the book. The actress was 13. 

What I didn’t know was that the director, Stanley Kubrick’s one regret was that he didn’t sufficiently dramatize the erotic aspects of the relationship. You never see them kiss other than a kiss on the cheek. He said that the sexual obsession was only hinted at because of the pressure from…(get this)…the Catholic Legion of Decency.

[C C]

That’s funny that you said that because I just finished watching that 1962 film, Lolita. I’ve been watching it on and off for the past three days. I didn’t read the book but I guess the film was supposed to be a comedy-drama. It wasn’t funny at all, though. What was funny, not funny ha-ha, but odd, was an attempt at humor in a film about Hebephilia. She was 12 in the book. The actress was 13. 

Sue Lyon was typecast with a similar role in "Night of the Iguana" (at least her character was 16 years old with regard to attracting Richard Burton's interest in that one). Grayson Hall -- who played "Julia Hoffman" in the later television horror soap-opera "Dark Shadows" -- was her aunt, chaperon, or whatever that was about (I only saw the film once). Shannon (Burton's character) used the now politically incorrect "D-word" in the course of deeming her a repressed lesbian.

What I didn’t know was that the director, Stanley Kubrick’s one regret was that he didn’t sufficiently dramatize the erotic aspects of the relationship. You never see them kiss other than a kiss on the cheek. He said that the sexual obsession was only hinted at because of the pressure from…(get this)…the Catholic Legion of Decency.

Compared to the heavy counseling and agitated, helicopter-hovering climate of today, it's striking how cavalier some psychology of human sexuality textbooks were back then -- when they broached the topic of sex involving minors. Some years ago I came across one in a box of old books bought at a garage sale, that dated to the very early '60s (in terms of it being a revised edition of an earlier publication for colleges).

In cases of molestation by older boys (often brothers, cousins, etc) it was contended that the violated younger child usually didn't suffer shame and much or any distress from the experience until exposed to the parents' frenzied reactions and alarm (given that they ever discovered such to begin with). The underlying suggestion from the "expert" seemed to be that it was much ado about nothing apart from the underage libertine being educated on the matter and instructed in a calm and professional manner not to be "playing doctor" with girls anymore. No mention of boy victims, as if the possibility of that was Martian territory. But seems like under a different chapter heading an incident was referenced as an example where a couple of older girls deflowered a younger one with a soda-pop bottle. Can't recall whether that was something about the "juvenile delinquent" roots of lesbianism or what.

Anyway, to each era its own brand of eccentricity or craziness, I guess.