GOD'S COUNTRY - Part 2 of 9

GOD'S Region - Component two of 9 www.nytimes.com December eleven, 1985 MALLE'S 'GOD'S COUNTYRY' IN MINNESOTA By JOHN CORRY WHAT lurks in Glencoe, Minn.? Who lives there? Is ''God's Country'' an ironic title? Properly, it is and it isn't, and till its ultimate moments, when Louis Malle, whose 90-minute documentary this is, insists on creating a statement, ''God's Country'' is totally engrossing. Mr. Malle, the distinguished French director, visited Glencoe, a town of 5000, in 1979. He returned previous summer season. Each instances he filmed the group and talked to its citizens. If there is a framework for ''God's Country,'' then, it is a question: What hath God wrought around six many years? But why Glencoe? It is a farming neighborhood sixty miles west of Minneapolis, with nine churches and a population that is primarily of German extraction. It is sedate, comfortable and, ''God's Country'' suggests, a trifle xenophobic, although not toward French directors. Mr. Malle, apparently, just liked it. ''Seen by an outsider,'' he says, ''Glencoeites are a peaceful, fairly placid, very pleasant group of individuals, but they have one devastating passion - lawn mowing.'' Go then to a sequence on Glencoeites rumbling close to lawns on energy mowers, or snipping in crevices with hand clippers. Mr. Malle isn't becoming patronizing right here he is much more like a bemused anthropologist. Glencoe is what Samoa was to Margaret Mead. At the exact same time, it's striking how speedily the Glencoeites adapt to Mr. Malle's digital camera. Constantly ingenuously ...