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GOD'S LAND Synopsis |
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“Blessed are they that have not seen, yet have believed” John 20:29
At the stroke of midnight on the Twenty-Fifth of March, in the suburban Texas town of Garland, the voice of God will be heard. The directive of the Creator will pre-empt all other programming on Cable Channel 18, and there He will deliver a message of eternal love, space travel and the end of the world. TEACHER CHEN is beckoned from Taiwan to Texas, to GOD’s LAND, at the behest of the Almighty himself to await further instructions. His followers come to wait with him, among them doctors, lawyers, professors and their families. They do their best to blend in to their new surroundings: they buy land, try to learn English and dress exclusively in white jumpsuits, boots and large white cowboy hats. One of the followers is a young doctor named HOU, his wife XIU and their 8-year-old son OLLIE. When the young family arrives, their new community is already the center of attention in the otherwise quiet suburban community. The police and press are keeping a close watch on their small matching houses and perfect lawns, for fear of an unspeakable demise (this was the age of Heaven’s Gate and the Branch Dravidians). Their white, Texan neighbors stare from their riding lawn mowers and whisper in the isles of shopping malls, riveted by the impending disaster which blankets the television. The story is told primarily from the point of view of XIU, uprooted from her comfortable life as the wife of a successful doctor and transplanted in Texas, to live semi-communal style. In the meantime her husband HOU is one of the Teachers most fervent followers. While he accepts the teachers predictions with enthusiasm, she sees only a loopy old man who speaks to God in the palm of his hand, names his own children Jesus and Buddha and waits to be taken into space in the garden gazebo. She also sees her family falling apart, and misses home. Based on the true story of “God Saves the Earth Saucer Foundation,” GOD’s LAND is a gentle comedy of cultural dislocation; a bittersweet story about searching for faith is strange places. These pilgrims are strangers in Texas, an arid paradise of perfect sameness. The preordained time arrives. Now the real search for spiritual truth begins. One has to choose to surrender.
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