There are a lot of movies at the first site you don’t know what to expect from them. That’s the case with The Unknown Country. All I knew about it was that up and Comer Lily Gladstone is the main star of it and that was good enough for me. She is in the soon-to-be-released Killers of the Flower Moon. So I wanted to see what other things she was doing. And this is one of them.

Tana (Lily Gladstone) is a young woman who has received some bad news about a tragedy in her life. After receiving this news she decides to embark on a road trip from Minnesota where she’s from to Texas. Along the way, she meets a lot of strange and interesting people. Including a man named Isaac (Raymond Lee) and his friends. This was an existential journey of discovery for her.

One of the things that makes this movie better than it deserves to be is the cinematography by Andrew Hajek. His camera work captures the Midwest like nothing I’ve seen before from the viewpoint of a car. There are plenty of shots of beautiful mountain vistas, green valleys, river bends, and snowy days and nights.  The cinematography was like a character in the film. It shows how truly beautiful this country is. 

The director Morrisa Maltz and the writers including Gladstone and Lainey Bearkiller- Shangreaux littered the movie with a bunch of people that the main character comes in contact with. They include a cat lady, a gay convenience store clerk, and some Native Americans that attend their wedding. The bride is her cousin and a close friend of hers. All these characters are interviewed in a documentary style like talking heads. They break up the monotony of the journey.

Having watched Gladstone for the first time I can see why Martin Scorsese chose her for his film Killers of the Flower Moon. She has a magnetic presence on screen. You can’t help but watch her every moment she is on screen. I was glued to her every movement and word she said in the film. In a way, I wish I could have a journey of self-discovery like this.  We all need a thing like this in our lives at times.

The Unknown Country is a film with a North-South journey at the center of it. The main character meets some nice and interesting people along the way but it’s her story at the forefront. Gladstone gives a  very good performance as this woman who needed this journey of self-discovery and reflectivity.  The filmmakers used beautiful cinematography and a documentary style to tell their story. And it made sense in this context. I’d say give this film a shot if you want to see something different.

3 stars

Dan Skip Allen