One of the glorious aspects of the Sundance film festival is that you never quite know what you are going to see. Some films are truly awful, some are bizarre or boring, and others are unassuming gems. One of this year’s gems is Francis Lee’s God’s Own Country. Set in Yorkshire during lambing season, the film layers the beauty of the countryside, the lonely struggles of rural life, same-sex love, and immigration in the UK.

放映结束后，李安、饰演约克郡农民约翰尼的乔什·奥康纳、饰演罗马尼亚农场工人盖奥赫的亚历克·西卡里努和电影制片人进行了问答。李在他拍摄的山坡上长大。奥康纳和西卡里亚努在农场工作了数周，甚至还生了羊羔。电影的服装设计师Sian Jenkins在当地商店买了Johnny的衣服，但让Ghorghe穿了一件Secareanu在罗马尼亚试镜时穿的毛衣。演职员表的背景是20世纪50年代约克郡的镜头。伊恩·哈特饰演约翰尼的父亲，他的表演非常逼真，其中有一个场景是约翰尼第二次严重中风后，有人在家里帮他洗澡。简而言之，这部电影的力量在于它完全的真实。

So as a philosopher, I can’t help but wondering: what makes a film authentic? The film has no distractions; there isn’t even a score until Johnny goes off the farm in search of Ghorghe. It’s unblinkingly honest, about the muck in rural barns, the economic fragility of the farm, the death of a newborn lamb, and the ravages of stroke. It depends more on visual imagery and on what the characters do than on what they say (some of which is in a very thick and difficult Yorkshire accent). It was filmed in a landscape the director knew intimately, on the hillside behind where he grew up. All this fits the initial characterization of “authenticity” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: “To say that something is authentic is to say that it is what it professes to be, or what it is reputed to be, in origin or authorship.” But then the entry on authenticity continues: “But the distinction between authentic and derivative is more complicated when discussing authenticity as a characteristic attributed to human beings. For in this case, the question arises: What is it to be oneself, at one with oneself, or truly representing one’s self?”

在《上帝的国度》中，每个角色都是完全的自己。但这不仅仅是角色本身。他们之间的关系、影片所处的乡村，甚至当代英国的政治背景都是如此。这部电影的导演李安希望这部电影能在英国讨论包括来自欧盟其他国家的移民问题时发挥作用。我仍然纠结于电影的名字——里面没有一点宗教的暗示——但我确实认为它传达了一种故事与土地是一体的感觉。我非常希望这部电影能得到应有的发行。