According to the text onscreen at the beginning of the film, Hlynur Pálmason‘s Godland is inspired by a collection of 19th century photographic plates discovered in the Icelandic wilderness, apparently taken by a Danish priest. This is a fiction invented by Pálmason but it’s an undeniably evocative one that effectively sets the stage for his engrossing exploration of the history, beauty and particular mindset of Iceland and its people.
Taking inspiration from those nonexistent photographs, Pálmason presents Godland in an approximation of a full aperture image, a 1.33:1 aspect ratio with rounded corners. Cinematographer Maria von Hausswolff gives us vision of tangible grandeur and danger, a land lit harshly by the midnight sun, foreboding even in its brightness and seemingly unchanged by time.
Godland does not hold back in its presentation of Iceland as a difficult place. Our Danish priest (Elliott Crosset Hove)–actually a Lutheran clergyman–has intentionally chosen the hard way–over land as opposed to sea–to reach the small Icelandic village where he has been tasked with establishing a church. His guide is a rugged Icelander named Ragnar (Ingvar Sigurdsson). The lengthy section of the film that covers this journey is not unlike a Western (one of the snowy ones), with men astride horses crossing rough country backdropped by stunning vistas.
Before any of that can happen, though, Ragnar has to teach Pastor Lucas how to ride a horse in the first place. This is only the first of multiple sequences in Godland in which Pálmason takes his time detailing a lengthy process. Later, we’ll see the same methodical approach used to show us the preparation of photographic glass slides, the decomposition of an animal carcass in the snow and other such four-dimensional events. Pálmason’s most recent film, the wonderful A White, White Day, took a similar approach to the aftermath of the loss of a spouse, making the term “grieving process” quite literal. If this is the director’s trademark, it’s an apt and gripping use of the cinematic form.
It’s more than just an exercise, though, this detailing of the ways in which things must unfold in their own time. It’s also the main source of the film’s tension. Pastor Lucas may present himself as a humble, learned servant but his utter faith in God has mutated into an utter faith in himself, causing him to believe he can force things that are not yet ready to be. Godland has all the transportive visual trappings of a man against nature story but it’s really a tragedy of a man battling his own arrogance and losing.
