A Review of Green and Gold by Olszyk
Distribution Service: Theatrical
MPAA Rating, Not rated at the time of this review
OSV Rating, Not rated at the time of this review
Reel Rating, Two and a Half Reels
There are two thing that unite every citizen of the great state of Wisconsin: dairy farming and a fanatical devotion to the Green Bay Packers football team (affectionately called “the Pack”). Green and Gold is a small but beautiful story about a man who loves these things and the granddaughter who loves him. Unfortunately, she might love music more than his desire for her to take over the family farm.
Buck (Craig T. Nelson) is farmer from a bygone era who appears to have walked straight out of a Paul Harvey speech. He does everything by hand: milking the cows himself every morning, doing all his own housework, and even ploughing fields with just a horse and his own strength. Helping him in this Amishesque effort his twentysomething granddaughter Jenny (Madison Lawlor). She too values his philosophy of rugged individualism and devotion to the land but secretly harbors an even greater love for folk music. On the weekends, she sneaks out to play mall gigs at local bars and push her original tunes onto radio stations. Two events suddenly thrown their quiet lives into jeopardy. It turns out that Buck is deeply in debt (probably due to his refusal to use even a motorized tractor), and the bank is threatening to take the land. At the time he needs Jenny the most, she meets Billy (Bandon Sklenar), a hot-shot country singer who takes an interest in her music and might whisk her away to fame and fortune. He makes a bet with the bank manager that if the Pack wins the Super Bowl, he gets one more year to pay everything back. Jenny might be harder to convince.
For people like Buck, God is inescapable reality. His life is tethered to the created world where His present is constantly experienced. However, Buck doesn’t seem to have much of a relationship with the One who made all things possible. Instead, he focuses all his spiritual energy on his land and the Pack. He grabs a handful of dirt and shoves it into Jenny’s face. “This,” he says seriously. “This is what matters. This is what we fight for.” His wife makes him go to church, but he ignores the service and promptly leaves when the game comes on the tube. Rather than putting the fate of his farm in God, he puts it in these pigskin players.
As the film progresses, however, he begins to soften his grip and open his heart. When his wife has a bad fall and ends up in the hospital, he teaches himself to speak to God directly, including awkwardly leading grace before dinner for the first time. He also reveals his hesitation to Jenny. In one of the final scenes, we learn that Jenny’s mother was a musician as well but passed away. Yes, he is worried if Jenny leaves, no one will take over the farm, but, more importantly, he is scared he will lose her too.
There is truth and great beauty in what Buck is trying to accomplish with his little patch of Earth, but it is not the Kingdom of Heaven. That would be his love for his wife and Jenny. In the end, he gives her his blessing. Oddly enough, Jenny has her moment of conversion as well when she discovers Billy only wanted her skills as a songwriter, taking her precious lyrics and making them his own. These songs are about getting up at 4am to birth a calf or seeing the sunrise over the pond. He could never understand their meaning. She comes back to the farm, saved by the care of their community rather than a football team, and, in the last, moment pledges her life and her generations to its care.
There’s much in Green and Gold that could be described as “niche.” It was produced by the local restaurant chain Culver’s, which doesn’t operate far outside the Midwest. The music is soft, gentle, and unhurried – far from modern country faire, much less pop. There are terms and accents only someone north of Chicago would understand. Like farming itself, this film demands a great deal from the uninitiated. Yet for the faithful, like my grandfather Barney Olszyk who was buried in Packers tie, it might just be the best film ever made, and still a wonderful story for everyone else.
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