How grim is it up North?

[qatsi]

On Thursday we went to Reading Film Theatre to see God's Own Country. If, in Cartman's immortal words, American independent cinema is all about gay cowboys, then is British independent cinema about gay sheep farmers? I enjoyed the film, but I did find it full of contrivances and contradictions. Johnny is plainly a bit of an idiot, who can barely be trusted with anything in the eyes of his parents, but as his father is incapacitated he has all the responsibility for the work on the farm. Despite this, and living in the middle of nowhere, there's no shortage of opportunities for casual sex and he also has enough money to get blind drunk most evenings. His mates have all left for university, although some of them have returned for "reading week". Gheorghe, the "only person who applied for the job" as a farm hand during the lambing season, is a Romanian migrant worker who speaks excellent English, is hard working, knowledgeable about his trade, and even makes sheeps' milk cheese. No wonder, in this vision of the world, they are "stealing our jobs". I do feel, in general, we are living the consequences of Blair's well-intentioned but flawed "education, education, education" mantra. As a member of the liberal metropolitan elite, I don't claim any expert knowledge of farming. But I have been rambling in the Lake District during the lambing season, and I have quite literally seen ewes giving birth. They don't, in general, need any human help. The idea that Johnny and Gheorghe are sent to a ruined shack up at the top of the hill for a few nights to keep an eye on the sheep is a fairly obvious plot device - dating, I would say, from at least the time of Virgil - but it seems a bit detached from reality. Another thing that I didn't find convincing was the scene in which Gheorghe skins a still-born lamb to use its fleece to provide an extra layer of warmth for a weak but live lamb - it seems unlikely to me that you could reasonably do this in plain view of the sheep, nor that the scent of the dead lamb wouldn't affect either the lamb or its mother - though on the other hand it also reveals a significant difference in the value placed on the weaker livestock by Johnny and Gheorghe. Maybe they do things differently in the Yorkshire Dales; the whole story is laced with grittiness and a suggestion that the farm hasn't been well run for a long time.