God's Country

In 1979, French filmmaker Louis Malle goes to the idyllic farming town of Glencoe, Minnesota, 60 miles west of Minneapolis. The friendly people are surprised to find the frenchman filming for public television. It's a town of 80% Germanic origins. On the surface, it's a traditional midwestern utopia where the folks go back generations. Below the surface, the family farm is under stress. In 1985, he returns to finish the film and finds some of the family farms struggling while small town life continues on.

The first 2/3 1979 section is a little slow. It's a lot of various small town folks with some interesting stormy clouds on the horizon. Louis Malle returns 6 years later to find some troubling problems. It's only the last 20 minutes and too short to dig really deeply into the various people. It's reminiscent of the 7-up series. I wish he had expended on the 1985 section and done another one 6 years later. I guess he doesn't have an assistant like Michael Apted who could take over and his death ends any possibility of a follow-up on these folks.