Lily Gladstone is one of those rare performers who can convey a lot to audiences even when she does not seem to signify much on the surface. With her own tranquil charisma and presence, she effortlessly interests and then engages us, and that is how she becomes the quiet but undeniably resonant soul of Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” (2003), for which she deservedly received a Best Actress Oscar nomination (She is also the first Native American Best Actress Oscar nominee, by the way).

In case of Morrisa Maltz’s little independent film “The Unknown Country”, which came out not long before “Killers of the Flower Moon” came out in last year, Gladstone does another subtle but mesmerizing acting which steadily carries the film from Minnesota to Texas without any misstep. While the movie simply follows her character’s journey without revealing that much about her character, we feel like getting to know her character more as observing more of her long journey, and that is why the movie earns its hauntingly poetic finale reminiscent of the works of Terrence Malick.

At the beginning, the movie opens with Gladstone’s character leaving her residence in Minneapolis, Minnesota in one early winter morning. As gradually revealed later in the story, she recently lost a family member who was quite dear and important to her, and her solitary grief is more palpable to us whenever she is driving alone or trying to sleep alone in a motel at late night.

In the middle of her personal journey across the American continent, she visits a female cousin of hers who happens to be about to marry her longtime boyfriend. Although they were quite young when they happened to be fallen in love with each other, they have diligently and sincerely maintained their relationship during next several years besides having several kids between them, and now they are going to have a wedding at last.

They and their oldest daughter are played by Lainey Bearkiller Shangreaux, Devin Shangreaux, and Jasmine Shangreaux, respectively. I have no idea on how much they play themselves in front of the camera (Lainey Bearkiller Shangreaux actually participated in writing the screenplay along with Maltz and Gladstone, by the way), but they look quite natural in their unadorned acting, and they and Gladstone instantly lets us feel the close human relationship between her character and theirs. While holding the center as usual, Gladstone steps aside a bit for her fellow cast members to shine, and Jasmine Shangreaux, who will appear along with Gladstone in Maltz’s next film “Jazzy” (2024), always brings some plucky spirit to the screen whenever she appears on the screen.

After the wedding ceremony, the mood becomes more introspective as Gladstone’s character visits an old relative of hers, who is wonderfully played by Richard Ray Whitman. As they remember more of her recently lost family member, she cannot help but become more sorrowful, but she is also comforted by how much she and other family members will remember their lost family member for the rest of their life, and that is one of small but touching moments in the film.

While Gladstone’s character keeps driving along the road to Texas, Maltz and her cinematographer Andrew Haiek gives us a series of wide and beautiful landscape shots which will take you back to the similar moments in Chloé Zhao’s Oscar-winning film “Nomadland” (2020). Just like the landscapes are dramatically changed along the road, the sociopolitical mood is notably changed as reflected by the shifting tones of those local radio programs on the soundtrack, and you may feel a little more nervous when the movie is eventually entering Texas along with its heroine.

In addition, the movie also sharply recognizes how vulnerable its heroine can be as a minority female figure traveling alone by herself. At one point early in the film, she cannot help but feel disturbed by one suspicious stranger she happens to encounter at a local gas station, and that is soon followed by an unnerving moment of possible danger. In case of some other scene later in the story, she happens to be approached by two white dudes at a local winter festival, and she feels very uncomfortable for an understandable reason.

However, the movie does not lose its humane view at all as occasionally focusing on a number of different strangers encountered by its heroine, and these strangers have each own human story to tell directly to us. Again, I do not know whether these performers in the film are professional or not, but they did a terrific job in each own way, and the result is so authentic that you may wonder whether the film is actually a documentary.

On the whole, “The Unknown Country”, which is incidentally Maltz’s first feature film, is recommendable for its calm and sensitive handling of mood, story, and character, and it is surely another highlight in the advancing acting career of Gladstone, who received the Best Lead Performer Award for this film at the Gotham Independent Film Awards in last year. Despite a brief downturn after her haunting breakout turn in Kelly Reichardt’s “Certain Women” (2016), she now becomes all the more prominent mainly thanks to all the acclaims she received for “Killers of the Flower Moon”, and I am sure that she will keep impressing us more during next several years.