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God’s Own Country finds tenderness to be the antidote to emotional abuse and a way to reinforce emotional strength. I suppose finding any tenderness in the Yorkshire countryside is a feat in itself as the frigid, windy landscapes aren’t exactly an inviting landscape to thrive in. This miserablism reflects itself in the life of our protagonist, Johnny (Josh O’Connor), and his eventual emotional awakening.
Johnny lives with his exacting grandmother (Gemma Jones) and disabled father (Ian Hart), neither of them provide much emotional succor, working their farm and spending the occasional day getting drunk and engaging in casual rough sex with random twinks. It is an isolated and punishing life that is just marinating in self-loathing and anger. Into this stasis comes Gheorghe (Alec Secareanu), a Romanian immigrant hired to help with the sheep. Gheorghe derails Johnny’s self-destructive behaviors by teaching him the joys of tenderness, vulnerability, and monogamy.
Sure, that God’s Own Country relies upon an “other” to teach is… not great. Gheorghe essentially has to teach Johnny how to “be” in an emotion and process them instead of evading or destroying them. He must melt layers of emotional armor and baggage and cause Johnny to open-up. At least the narrative provides him with a fully realized personality that keeps him from sliding into “magical other” that teaches the white guy how to feel/be better.
It helps that O’Connor and Secareanu craft real people that invite our deepest sympathies and make us root for them. Yes, I wanted them to have a fairy tale ending of some variation and got deeply emotional when the climatic scenes started to pile-up. The planting and payoff of their relationship and Johnny’s maturation are wonderfully done between the writing and the performances.
Johnny’s bullish understanding of intimacy is evidenced by his first aggressive sexual encounter with Gheorghe as they wrestle in the mud. After this first encounter, where the two of them fight like apex predators without saying a word, Gheorghe begins to disrupt the cyclical nature of these encounters by demanding tenderness and affection. Johnny has spent so much mistaking abuse for affection that he seems bewildered and blindsided by this brand new, freely given gift.
God’s Own Country really makes understanding his plight the crux of the narrative. Not only is there the prominent romance, but his well-drawn out relationship with his family. Johnny’s newly discovered vulnerability repays itself towards his father in a scene of shocking candidacy as he bathes his father after another stroke has rendered him entirely dependent. He promises to take care of the family farm but demands that the rules governing the place change under his rule. If nothing else, it underscores how so much of the film is about how masculinity can be a prison and force people into the closest through silence, shame, and intimidation.
