The college-age child of an acquaintance spent the better part of a recent afternoon enlightening her elders about what is said to be the oncoming climate disaster and the measures by which it could be averted. When the subject of wind turbines came up as a means of generating energy, their virtues were extolled enthusiastically by our interlocutor. A guest asked if turbines weren’t an insult to the natural world — an aesthetic eyesore, if you will, on God’s dominion — and the boomers in attendance were summarily tut-tutted and told that such matters would be addressed at some later date. Not to worry, not to worry. 

This conversation came to mind as I was watching “The Beasts,” the powerful new film by Spanish filmmaker Rodrigo Sorogoyen, in which wind turbines and their aesthetic impact on God’s dominion is the plot point on which the story centers. What’s surprising about the screenplay by Mr. Sorogoyen and Isabel Peña, his writing partner, is that the issue is a sticking point not for a climate-denying yahoo, but for back-to-the-land agrarians intent on preserving the old ways. Nature is a resource, it is implied, whose well-being shouldn’t be separated from its beauty.

“The Beasts” opens with a scene of men corralling horses — fighting with them, it seems. The brawn expended on either side is impressive, putting in mind the emphasis on muscle and rhythm one sees in Michelangelo, Rubens, and, at more scarifying moments, Goya. The scene is predicated on a rapa des bestas, a tradition found amongst the rural people of Galicia, in which wild horses are wrestled by village members in order to shear the animal’s mane. The rationale for doing so is to remove parasites. As framed by Mr. Sorogoyen, the ritual is as primal as myth; as sensual, too.

Are these the animals referred to in the film’s title? Not by a long shot, and here’s where additional comparisons to Goya are warranted. (For what it’s worth, the Spanish equivalent of the Oscars are dubbed the Goya Awards.) Mr. Sorogoyen and Ms. Peña have crafted a film fraught with moral complications, a story in which trepidation and darkness color even the sunniest of days. “Threats, pride, difficult coexistence, outbursts of violence, fear” — that’s the gloss they put on their own picture. Goya, back in the day, would’ve understood.

Antoine and Olga are 50-something French citizens who have relocated to the hill country in northwestern Spain. Antoine (Denis Ménochet) is bearlike in girth and demeanor, evincing gruff humor and tenderness only to his closest acquaintances. They include Pepiño (José Manuel Fernández Blanco) and Breixo (Gonzalo Garcia), neighbors to whom Antoine extends an almost brotherly affection. And then, of course, there’s his wife Olga (Marina Foïs), a woman whose stoicism evinces a deeply rooted faith in her husband — for most things, anyway.

She’s not fond of Antoine’s camera. When Antoine runs afoul of some locals, in particular the voluble Xan (Luis Zahera) and his younger sibling Lorenzo (Diego Anido), he begins to surreptitiously film their encounters. The brothers live directly next door to Antoine and Olga and deeply resent their presence. Not only are Antoine and Olga foreigners and educated, but Antoine is the key bulwark against a corporate buy-out of land for the placement of wind turbines. The locals are desperate to sell because it means money in their pockets — more money, in all probability, than they ever thought they’d see.

What begins as a barroom argument between Antoine and Xan turns into an increasingly fraught game of one-upmanship, with threats devolving into economic ruin, emotional dissonance, civic strife, and, finally, violence. Mr. Sorogoyen favors long takes and, praise be, his actors are up to the task.

Mr. Zahera is especially riveting, not least because of the tightly coiled anger he brings to his role of a man frustrated by circumstance and poverty. But, then, all of the cast members are excellent, and when the story takes a stark turn, Ms. Foïs brings extra shades of fortitude and complexity to hold us enthralled. “The Beasts” is a film of rare, if sometimes brutal, magnificence.