Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Hlynur Pálmason
Starring: Elliott Crosset Hove, Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson, Jacob Lohmann, Vic Carmen Sonne, Ída Mekkín Hlynsdóttir
In recent years Iceland has become the go-to location for filmmakers
who wish to recreate fantasy realms or alien worlds. Its landscape is
forbidding and largely uninhabited, yet it's also a top destination for
stag dos and boozy weekends. It's a country few would have the fortitude
to survive in, but everybody wants to visit for a fun time.
This duality is at the heart of writer/director
Hlynur Pálmason's period drama Godland, which almost feels like the work of an Icelander sick of tourists
vomiting over the edge of his country's cliffs. Set at some point in the
late 19th century, it tells of a young Danish priest, Lucas (Elliott Crosset Hove), who is sent to Iceland (then part of the Danish empire) to oversee
the construction of a church in a small village on the island's west
coast. Lucas could simply take a boat directly to the village, but he's
a keen photographer who insists on making a cross-country trek,
documenting the country with his camera on his travels.
This journey takes up roughly the first half of the film and plays like
a call back to the sort of movies Tarkovsky and Herzog made in the
1970s. While none of the cast and crew of Godland are
likely to have developed cancer or tried to murder their director, it
does look like the sort of shoot that can't have been much fun. Lucas's
naivete about the unwelcoming nature of Iceland and its people soon
gives way to distress as the journey takes it emotional and physical
toil. With wind, rain and snow constantly battering the screen, you may
wish to change your socks halfway through the movie, such is the rugged
realism of the filmmaking.
Godland can't be accused of subtlety. Early on a large
wooden cross hauled by Lucas's Icelandic guides is lost in a river, an
on-the-nose symbol of the philosophical crisis about to befall the
priest. It's also not particularly original, relying heavily on aping
shots from Tarkovsky films as Maria von Hausswolff's camera pans
slowly across swampy terrain and Hove increasingly resembles
Stalker's Alexander Kaidanovsky as the movie progresses. It's in the second
half that it really becomes derivative. After passing out on his
journey, Lucas wakes in his destination, finding himself in the care of
Danish settler Carl (Jacob Hauberg Lohmann) and his daughters,
the twentysomething Anna (Vic Carmen Sonne) and the young
teenager Ida (Ida Mekkin Hlynsdottir). The animosity between
Lucas and his chief local guide, Ragnar (Ingvar Sigurdsson, stars
of Pálmason's previous film,
A White, White Day), grows in a way that plays like a barely disguised reworking of the
central duel fought between Daniel Day Lewis and Paul Dano in
There Will Be Blood. Here it's the religious man who is the interloper and a godless local
who rubs up against him, but it's almost a beat for beat retelling of
the final act of Paul Thomas Anderson's acclaimed drama. The image of
the half-constructed church is likely inspired by Robert Altman's
McCabe and Mrs Miller, and there's something of the Australian New Wave classic
Wake in Fright in how Lucas goes from pompous and starched
to wide-eyed and psychotic, a transformation brought on by his
inability to adapt to his gruff surrounds.
At two hours and 20 minutes, Godland spends a lot of time
trying to find its own story, and never quite succeeds. Pálmason clearly
has an issue with organised religion and wants to point out its
hypocrisy - which he does very well in a late scene that sees the young
priest lose his rage when his sermon is disrupted by a crying baby and a
barking dog (so much for all God's creatures) - but I'm not sure I
bought the supporting characters' disdain for the church. When Lucas and
Anna start making googly eyes at one another, her father grows angry,
disapproving of the priest. Maybe I'm wrong, but a Lutheran priest seems
like the ideal candidate any 19th century Danish man would want for a
son-in-law.
Godland doesn't have much original to say, and what it
does say is often hard to swallow, particularly some final reel
escalations. It can however claim to be one of the most visually
impressive movies you'll see all year. Using an almost square frame with
rounded edges to evoke Lucas's photographs, the cinematography forces
you to look into the frame, into the landscape, into the void. Iceland
is captured as a land both beautiful and inhospitable. You might want to
pack some extra pairs of socks for your mate's Reykjavik stag do.
