• Celebrity
    • Of The Essence
    • Celebrity News
    • If Not For My Girls
    • The State Of R&B
    • Time Of Essence
  • Fashion
    • 2023 Best In Black Fashion Awards
    • 2023 Fashion House
    • Red Carpet
    • Fashion News
    • Accessories
  • Beauty
    • Girls United: Beautiful Possibilities
    • 2023 Best In Black Beauty
    • Skin
    • Makeup
    • Nails
    • Hair
  • Lifestyle
    • Love
    • Parenting
    • Relationships
    • Bridal Bliss
    • Lifestyle News
    • Health & Wellness
    • ESSENCE Eats
    • Travel
    • Food & Drink
  • Entrepreneurship
    • Money & Career
  • News
    • Latest News
    • Paint The Polls Black
    • Culture
    • Politics
  • Shopping
  • Video
  • Events
    • 2023 Fashion House
    • 2023 ESSENCE Festival Of Culture
    • 2023 Wellness House
    • 2023 Black Women In Hollywood
    • 2023 ESSENCE Film Festival
    • 2023 HOLLYWOOD HOUSE
  • Studios
  • Girls United

WHERE BLACK CULTURE, COMMUNITY AND CONSCIOUSNESS MEET

Sign up for ESSENCE Newsletters the keep the Black women at the forefront of conversation.

Your email is required.
Your email is in invalid format.
Confirm email is required.
Email did not match.
Select the newsletters you'd like to receive:
Please select at least one option.
By clicking Subscribe Now, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Skip to content
SUBSCRIBE
  • MAGAZINE
  • NEWSLETTER
  • Celebrity
    • Of The Essence
    • Celebrity News
    • If Not For My Girls
    • The State Of R&B
    • Time Of Essence
  • Fashion
    • 2023 Best In Black Fashion Awards
    • 2023 Fashion House
    • Red Carpet
    • Fashion News
    • Accessories
  • Beauty
    • Girls United: Beautiful Possibilities
    • 2023 Best In Black Beauty
    • Skin
    • Makeup
    • Nails
    • Hair
      • Hair News
      • Natural
      • Relaxed
      • Transitioning
      • Weave
      • 4C
  • Lifestyle
    • Love
    • Parenting
    • Relationships
    • Bridal Bliss
    • Lifestyle News
    • Health & Wellness
    • ESSENCE Eats
    • Travel
    • Food & Drink
  • Entrepreneurship
    • Money & Career
  • News
    • Latest News
    • Paint The Polls Black
    • Culture
    • Politics
  • Shopping
  • Video
  • Events
    • 2023 Fashion House
    • 2023 ESSENCE Festival Of Culture
    • 2023 Wellness House
    • 2023 Black Women In Hollywood
    • 2023 ESSENCE Film Festival
    • 2023 HOLLYWOOD HOUSE
  • Studios
  • Girls United
Home · Film Festivals

Thandiwe Newton Is Intoxicating In The Slow-Burning Film 'God's Country’

The film which premiered at Sundance is based on James Lee Burke's short story, 'Winter Light.'
Thandiwe Newton Is Intoxicating In The Slow-Burning Film ‘God’s Country’
By Aramide Tinubu · Updated January 28, 2022

As God’s Country opens, a woman walks into a dimly lit crematorium. This initial scene snaps the eerie tone of Julian Higgins’s film into place. As the world of the film opens up, the viewers learn that the lone woman at the crematorium is Sandra (Thandiwe Newton). It’s just before Christmas, and she’s grieving the loss of her estranged mother. 

A humanities professor at the local university, Sandra is well-liked by her students and more than equipped to do her job. But the unnamed Montana town surrounding her, including its mountains and people, are stark white. Higgins didn’t need the aid of a desaturated color palette to zero in on Sandra’s otherness, but this Black woman’s solitary state in this environment only fuels the sinister nature of the film.

God’s Country, which is based on James Lee Burke’s short story, Winter Light, takes place over a week, and on the first day, Sandra notices a cherry red pickup truck parked boldly on her property. After leaving a note on the car asking the driver to find somewhere else to park, Sandra thinks nothing of the incident. However, when the owners of the vehicle –brothers and hunters Nathan (Joris Jarsky) and Samuel (Jefferson White), rudely dismiss her firm but polite ask, something shifts within Sandra.

Article continues after video.

What she first views as annoyance needles into her psyche. It’s a feeling spurned by both her grief, a frustrating hiring process at the university, and a lifetime of microaggressions. Disgusted by the audacity of Nathan and Samuel, Sandra launches a full-out war with them. 

Higgins moves his film along at a painstaking pace, almost to the point of crawling. However, Newton is constantly riveting. Though Sandra’s choices aren’t always right, they certainly feel justified. After being dismissed by the hunters and later by the town’s sheriff, Gus Wolf (Jeremy Bobb), she determined that she won’t be made to feel like an outsider in the place she’s chosen to make her home. 

The Angry Black woman trope could’ve been an easy trap for a less skilled actress to fall into, but Sandra’s subversion of niceness is refreshing in Newton’s hands. Though the viewers might not wholly understand Sandra’s agitation over the parked pickup, she still has a lot of other things to be mad about. Yet, her unwillingness to play nice after being patronized and disrespected doesn’t exactly make her choices justifiable. 

Women of color watching the film who are well aware of racial and gender violence would undoubtedly question Sandra’s choice to move to this rural Montana town. It’s a place where the experiences and understandings of the people living there would be in such sharp contrast to her own. After all, just as she’s judged, she’s hypercritical of Nathan, Samuel, and others for the boundaries she feels they’ve placed on their lives. Moreover, as the week presses forward and her feud with the hunters escalates, Sandra’s safety is also threatened. 

Also, while God’s Country does keep a taut tension throughout, it stumbles a bit when Sandra’s past as a police officer in pre-Katrina New Orleans is revealed. The backstory is almost baffling since it doesn’t align with the character presented other than doubling down on her toughness. Moreover, Sandra’s arguments with her colleague Arthur (Kai Lennox), who refuses to take her pleas for diversity seriously, lean into tokenism. 

Still, when the narrative focuses on Sandra’s torment at the hands of Nathan and Samuel, especially as the film goes at long last, hurtling into its violent but gratifying final moments, it becomes as a whole an intoxicating watch. 

God’s Country premiered at Sundance Festival Jan. 23, 2022.

TOPICS:  Sundance Film Festival
COMPANY INFORMATION
  • Our Company
  • Customer Service
  • Essence Ventures
  • Change Your Address
  • Contact Us
  • Job Opportunities
  • Internships
  • Media Kit
  • tag
SUBSCRIBE
  • Newsletters
  • Give a Gift of ESSENCE
  • Magazine Tablet Edition
FOLLOW US
MORE ON ESSENCE
  • Home
  • Love
  • Celebrity
  • Beauty
  • Hair
  • Fashion
  • ESSENCE festival

ESSENCE.com is part of ESSENCE Communications, Inc.

Essence may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Offers may be subject to change without notice.

©2023 ESSENCE Communications Inc. All Rights Reserved. | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use | Essence.com Advertising Terms

Get The ESSENCE Newsletter and
Special Offers delivered to your inbox

By clicking Sign Up, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

Get The ESSENCE Magazine
by subscribing below
subscribe now