‘Godland’ Review: A Danish Priest Experiences a Crisis of Faith in Late-Colonial Iceland
Courtesy of TIFF.
Arriving on the Criterion Channel Tuesday, June 20, Godland is the latest from Icelandic filmmaker Hlynur Pálmason. Already deemed one of the year's most salient movies, both visually and thematically, Godland takes place in the late 19th century and centers around a young Lutheran priest sent from Denmark to Iceland to oversee the construction of a new church. Inspired by the wet-plate photography from the era –– along with Pálmason's own dual identity between his birth country and its former colonizer –– Godland creates a portrait of intruding forces arriving in a captivating yet brutal landscape to forcibly imprint itself upon a place it takes little effort to understand.
Lucas (Elliot Crosset Hove, who received a European Film Award nomination for the role) is a Lutheran priest in training being sent on a mission to Iceland to supervise the completion of a church in one of the island's remote communities. Idealistic to the point of naivety, Lucas believes he can trek across Southern Iceland's unforgiving terrain to photograph the scenery and better understand the people and culture of the place where his faith is being compulsorily introduced. Before his departure, Lucas is warned by a senior priest: "You must adapt to the circumstances of the country and its people." Weakened by the crossing, Lucas is brought to his knees with exhaustion as soon as he arrives on the Icelandic shores, foreshadowing his coming treacherous adventures. To reach his destination, Lucas hires a local guide, Ragnar (celebrated Icelandic actor Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson), a wizened, intuitive Icelandic-born man perfectly attuned to his natural surroundings. As Lucas traverses the country with the benefit of Ragnar's direction, the juxtaposition of their ideological philosophies takes a mighty toll on Lucas's connections to his faith and the world around him.
Courtesy of TIFF.
With its central composition of a man's losing battle with his physical environment, Godland takes on Herzog-esque features but finds itself much more interested in interpersonal dichotomies than individual introspection. Pálmason's Icelandic heritage clearly informs the movie's perspective with a deep respect for its scenic, untouched locations, which were often so remote that the film crew had to reach them on horseback. There is an essential conjunction between these environmental limitations and the movie's final outcome: creating an atmosphere so alien and unrelenting to the film's ecclesiastical anti-hero that audiences can become fully absorbed in his collapse into faithlessness.
The turbulent dynamic between Lucas and Ragnar is one of Godland's representations of the troubled colonial past between Iceland and Denmark. As the film moves forward, Lucas's physical and moral essence is increasingly broken down by his incapacity to acclimate to Iceland and its people. Eternally stiff, awkward, and frosty, Lucas continually rejects opportunities to understand his new surroundings, detracting from the locals and their beliefs and refusing to learn their language. At one point, the priest even prays for death, professing to his savior, "I can't be here any longer with these people." Lucas becomes devoured by every decision he makes, further debilitating his ties to the spirituality he holds so closely. In almost total opposition –– much to Lucas's unspoken resentment –– every aspect of Ragnar's virile life exists in symbiosis with his native soil. Although well beyond middle age, he works out every morning, grounds himself in his surroundings, and commands his beloved herd of Icelandic ponies with the most excellent ease. Constantly singing traditional tunes and telling folkloric stories around the campfire, Ragnar’s connection to his spirituality directly challenges Lucas’s waning faith. Ragnar understands his tiny position within the frame of the larger world, something that Lucas's outsized role in the church prevents him from comprehending.
The complexities of Denmark's colonial effects on Iceland are further reinforced through the push and pull between the two cultures' representations on screen in Godland. The small community built around the church Lucas is overlooking illustrates this friction, a place still dominated by local customs while still being assimilated into a monotheistic European civilization. Two young women in this growing congregation mirror Lucas and Ragnar in unexpected ways. Anna, a woman entering adulthood, was born in Denmark before moving to Iceland at a young age. She sidesteps speaking Icelandic whenever possible and broods over her early memories of Denmark to Lucas, who she reveres as a potential escape from her isolated surroundings back to the life she once knew in continental Europe. Au contraire, Anna's younger sister, Ida, was born in Iceland and remains enamored by the island's wild beauty as the only life she has ever known. Her relationship with the land and its people opens her up to experiences that enrich her life and leave her quite fulfilled, unlike Anna. Ida sees herself as equally Danish and Icelandic, expressing an openness on the side of Icelandic culture that the entitled outsider attitude does not reciprocate.
Courtesy of TIFF.
The visual dialect of Godland astonishingly contributes to the film's unique impression, never straying far from its inspirations based on late-19th-century photography. The movie was shot on 35mm film in a boxy, 1:33:1 aspect ratio, faithfully harkening back to photographs from a long-forgotten era. Cinematographer Maria von Hausswolff's camera maintains a controlled, often stationary perspective, allowing Godland's naturalistic scenes to perform like bucolic tableaus. Characters often bore straight into the camera's lens with their gaze, touching viewers with near-fourth wall breaks that are emotionally charged and connected to early photography practices of staring straight into the camera with a calculated composure. In association with Lucas's downward spiral, the camera takes on a more abstract approach as the film advances, particularly through time-lapse shots that work through many seasons, reflective of the power of nature over humankind.
Vanskabte Land in Danish, Volaða land in Icelandic, Godland astutely and entrancingly shines light on an often overlooked facet of European colonialism. The film speaks to Pálmason's intricate relationship between his birthplace of Iceland and Denmark, where he attended film school and lived for over a decade, allowing the filmmaker to excavate his own complex understanding of his origins and home country. Just Pálmason's third feature, Godland first premiered over a year ago at the 75th Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard section before making its way through the festival circuit with screenings at Telluride and Toronto. Janus Films released the movie in North American theaters on February 3, and now it will find a home on the Criterion Channel beginning June 20.