Wednesday, February 14, 2018

Good Morning, World

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One of the best movies of 2017, Francis Lee's God's Own Country, hit blu-ray yesterday - if you missed my review you can read it right here. The only thing disappointing about this movie has been the way the conversations surrounding it have regressed into exactly what I didn't want to happen last fall regarding BPM...
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Every time I tweet about Call Me By Your Name I get some yahoo screaming "God's Own Country is better!" as if we can only have one - yes I know CMBYN has hogged all of the awards attention, but... awards are dumb, guys. Really really dumb. Rejoice in great movies! That's what we're here for in the first place.

I do have to say there's been a tinge of internalized homophobia wafting off of some of the God's Own Country defenses. I'm not laying that at the film itself's feet - the film is capable of great warmth and sweetness; can you think of a sweeter scene in 2017 than the one where Gheorghe puts flowers and a little tablecloth on the table and serves Johnny dinner? Swoon! But I've gotten comments that walk right up to the line of GOC is manlier, with its beer + sweat + fucking in the mud, implying that's superior...
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Truth be told I'm probably closer to the characters in God's Own Country - I drink beer not wine, I grew up farm-adjacent (my father grew up on a farm and my grandparents still had it through my childhood); there's just a lot of country boy in me, as much as I'd love to be refined Elio in his marble castle. But I gave up worrying about projecting emphatic masculinity circa college and there's really nothing more boring and desperate than somebody who postures themselves as such. Just relax, man. Life's too short to spend it posing so hard. That's basically the message of God's Own Country in a nutshell. So listen to the damn movie!


5 comments:

JimmyD said...

It's sad that in the 21st century... everything... EVERYTHING is a fucking contest!
We have more queer cinema now, than EVER before... yet... Contest!!
Enjoy them all!! If one is not quite to your tastes... that does not mean it's bad.
Come on people... we're suppose to be better than that!!

Tom M said...

Watched it for FREE on Kanopy (thanks to library card) the other night and was blown away. What a rich year for LGBTQ movies. And I may never look at sweaters the same again.

Jason Adams said...

Oh it's on Kanopy??? Thanks for the heads up on that, Tom!!!

mangrove said...

You have to admit there seems to be a whiff of class contempt in your championing CMBYN over GOC that could easily be explained by your desire to secede from your own childhood background and your desire to signify to your readers that you’ve put all that well behind you.

Jason Adams said...

Uhhh no, I don't have to admit that. And as somebody who's written extensively about my experiences with poverty honestly that kind of pisses me off. I don't hold poor people in contempt; I've written tons about the poverty I grew up in - and which my family remains in - and the way that's shaped my life and my understanding and relation to class.

And me pretending I put that behind me would be awfully hypocritical since I haven't put any of it behind me, I'm still poor as shit and I've made little secret of that. I would love for Elio to come and pay my tens of thousands of dollars of college debt that's just sitting there stagnating though, by all means - let's dream that shit into reality.