GOD’S COUNTRY
In the trial of a band of white supremacists for racketeering (one of several real events that anchor Dietz’s script), a prosecuting attorney quotes an American hostage whose plane was hijacked by Arabs: “They were a band of thieves, thugs, and murderers who justified their deeds with vows of religious fervor.” And, she declares, that description applies as well to the white supremacists. Is she right? Their actions were, indeed, those of mere thugs; but their words hark back to the elevated, mythically inclined catechisms of medieval knights and ancient conquerors. And what of their thoughts?
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Too often, God’s Country fails to make a human connection in its flow of words—claims, accusations, proclamations, confessions, and prayers—which Dietz seems to have drawn in large part from such public sources as court transcripts, interviews, and propaganda tracts. Those words are instructive, to be sure: generic statements that could have come from extremists of any race or political camp, about freedom of speech and political trials and the glory of a brave death in the “secret war” with “the regime in Washington,” as well as more ideologically specific rantings against Jews or about the Bible being “the family history of the white race.” Such absurdities are worth keeping in mind in light of actual events: onetime Klan leader David Duke winning 60 percent of the white vote in his Louisiana senate race, for instance, or racial harassment at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Dietz’s main accomplishment in writing God’s Country has been to accumulate material few people are aware of; Interplay’s generally competent if only intermittently compelling production also serves a purpose that’s more educational than artistic.
