Godland

 Godland (Hylnur Palmason 2023) is advertised as being about a young pastor's loss of faith when confronted with the tribulations of the Icelandic wilderness.  This may seem promising, but it misrepresents the movie.  In fact, Godland concerns a highly parochial subject, the fraught relationship between Danish and Icelandic speaking people in the former Danish colony around 1870.  This subject matter is reflected in the film's title -- the movie is called both Volatha Land  (Icelandic) and Vanskable Land (Danish), both names translating to the English Godland.  Palmason notes that Denmark annexed Iceland in the medieval period and ruled the place from Copenhagen for five-hundred years -- Iceland achieved some measure of self-governance in 1918 and opportunistically seized full independence during Denmark's occupation by the Nazis in 1944 (that story involving Iceland's complicity with the German occupiers is a vexed aspect of the the country's history).  In his interview on the Criterion disk of the film, Palmason observes that Iceland's slow-motion separation from Denmark was "very soft" and that the subject is, perhaps, not intrinsically interesting -- there are no freedom fighters, martyrs, or terrorism.  Apparently, there was some fairly significant hostility between speakers of the two languages, perhaps, because linguistic distinctions also had socio-economic implications, although Palmason is far too austere a film maker to dramatize anything of this sort.  (In fact, Palmason is so rigorous that he scarcely dramatizes anything at all; he's a highly ascetic filmmaker.)  In any event, the viewer should be forewarned:  the movie isn't about anything likely to be the subject of banter at your next cocktail party; rather, the film is essentially about two men who for reasons of pride refuse to speak one another's language with ultimately dire, if mostly inexplicable, consequences.   The film is ultimately disappointing and very ineptly made -- crucial plot elements are left in obscurity not as a tease to the viewer, or to inspire thought, but because Palmason was too lazy to work out these details.  ("Lazy" is the wrong word; the film was made over a three-year period, extensively re-written and re-imagined from its original scenario -- "indifferent" is a better word; Palmason in the interview made part of the Criterion CD admits that he's uninterested in plot and this shows in the film.)  The movie is very beautiful but this is a by-product of Iceland's majestic landscapes -- anywhere you point your camera, you will record spectacular images.  For this reason, shows like the 2024 iteration of True Detective are filmed in Iceland although the show is ostensibly set in Alaska; Iceland is the new Monument Valley for the 2020's and, it seems, that half of the population of the small nation is somehow involved in filmmaking.  

The first third of Godland is the best part of the movie.  A Lutheran pastor named Lucas is dispatched to Iceland, apparently to build a church in a remote area.  (Iceland was converted in 1000 and piously Lutheran after the Reformation -- exactly why a mission to Iceland is required in 1870 is unclear; the movie doesn't bother to explain the hero's mission to a place that is already full of churches and parishioners.  There is some implication that an exploding volcano may have displaced people to another part of the island, although why these folks wouldn't move with their pastors among them in unexplained.)  The Bishop in Denmark portentously warns the hero that the volcanoes smell so bad it is "as if the land shat its pants" and that the odor of sulfur (and the interminable summer days) drives people mad.  Lucas sets sail and tries, unsuccessfully, to learn Icelandic on the vessel.  The language is daunting -- it has, we learn, at least 20 variant words for rainfall.  But, one would think that an educated man would be able to master at least the rudiments of the language before reaching his destination -- and aren't there books in Danish providing instruction in Icelandic?  In any event, Lucas is set down on a wholly uninhabited and desolate shore.  A group of about 6 Icelanders led by the formidable Ragnar meet him and are charged with escorting the pastor over dangerous and wild country to some place about a week's travel away.  Again, Palmason doesn't have a rational motivation for this bravura sequence, about forty minutes of spectacular landscape photography depicting the cross-country slog on wiry, furry Icelandic ponies.  Why didn't this idiot priest sail to Rekyavik and, if he wanted to see the landscapes, make forays out into the country from that place?  Much of the plot is motivated by Lucas' hobby -- he is an amateur glass-plate photographer and he carries on his back an elaborate kit including the bulky camera, it's stilt-like tripod, plates and chemicals, and, even, a tarp used for developing glass plates in the field.  Lucas has a cross that is about four feet tall -- why he's carrying this thing is also inexplicable.   There are certainly plenty of crosses in Iceland. But it's a burden that the Icelanders reasonably resent; Ragnar suggests sawing the thing in two.  (The cross gets dropped in a river and floats away, never to be seen again except in a few morose inserts wallowing in the water.)  The pastor isn't particularly religious, doesn't seem pious just socially inept, and his real religion is obviously his hobby -- that is, photography; he's more attached to his camera equipment  that the accoutrements of his faith.  Tensions arise during the arduous trip cross-country.  Ragnar describes Lucas as a "Danish devil" and, although he obviously understands the priest's language, he refuses to speak to him in that tongue.  While crossing a swollen river, one of the travelers falls from his horse, is swept away and drowns.  (Ragnar has opposed crossing the river; Lucas, who is an idiot, demands that they cross -- it's not clear why he's in a hurry.  Viewers are baffled when Ragnar inexplicably agrees to the dangerous river crossing with fatal results.)  Midway through the movie it's obvious that Palmason's objectives are in bad faith -- he doesn't want to explain anything and just wants to leave the viewer confused.  The people wander around singing utterly impenetrable folk songs -- either lists of names or ballads about trolls cutting people up into pieces while referring to them with honorifics.  The characters do things that make no sense:  two men strip down and stand in the mist from a thousand-foot waterfall -- it looks like it's about 40 degrees.  Why would anyone do this?  People are always trudging through water -- don't their feet get cold and doesn't this damage their boots?  Ragnar does weird calisthenics every morning that seem to be part of some religious ritual.  What's this about?  The problem is epitomized with shot of steaming horse dung early in the movie.  A large pink earthworm is crawling in the horse dung.  What is this supposed to show?  Are we supposed to think that the earthworm came out of the horse -- that is, that the pony had worms?  Or did Palmason happen to find an earthworm crawling on the ground and just put on the dung?  (The obviously freshly deposited horse-shit would be on top of the worm not below it.) The shot makes no sense and does nothing but confuse the viewer.  Ultimately, Lucas, who is very bad horseman, falls off his animal and goes into some sort of suspended animation or coma -- he has his eyes open and we think he's dead.  In fact, this is just some sort of state of extreme exhaustion as imagined (implausibly) by Palmason and designed to further baffle the viewer.  The end of the picturesque first part of the film is signaled by gaudy shots of volcanoes erupting (where?  how is this related to the movie?) and, then, luscious underwater footage of young women frolicking in waist-deep tidal pools -- don't people in Iceland get cold when they dip themselves in frigid 35 degree sea water?  

The second half of the movie details Lucas' attempts to assimilate with the community where he builds the church.  The place is like one of John Ford's isolated farms in Monument Valley, a stony seaside with huge boulders fallen from pinnacles of rock jutting up over the sea-shore.  How or why anyone would live in such a place is unclear.  A Danish-speaking merchant (what does he sell? where? our of what kind of store?) lives in a nice clapboard house with a piano and pleasant amenities.  The merchant, who is named Carl, wryly asks Lucas why he came "the long way" -- that is, cross-country. (Where's his wife?  Why isn't there any trace of her?)  "You could have just sailed here," the merchant speaking for the viewer says.  Lucas stammers that he wanted to see the country and its people to which the merchant responds:  "So how many people did you see out there?" The answer, of course, is none.  Carl doesn't want Lucas who is  ahaggard, ugly Ichabod Crane kind of guy, messing around with his attractive nubile daughter, Anna.  But, of course, Anna is interested in the ghastly pastor and seduces him.  (There's a scene in which Lucas takes a picture of Anna and the two of them go into the canvas darkroom tent "to see what develops."  Dear reader, I kid you not.)  Ragnar is hanging around.  For some reason that Palmason doesn't bother to explain, Ragnar kills Lucas' horse -- except that Lucas doesn't have a horse so I guess it's Carl's pony that bites the dust here.  (The horse picturesquely decays over the course of two years in images shot at monthly intervals it seems -- the effect is like the decaying zebras and other animals in Peter Greenaway's A Zed and Two Noughts.)  At a community dance, again staged like something out of John Ford's My Darling Clementine, the men stage a wrestling tournament -- in a grimly symbolic sequence the haggard pastor wrestles first Carl, whom he beats, and, then, the burly Ragnar whom he fights to a draw (apparently since Palmason can't be bothered to resolve this fight sequence and just cuts away to a baby, presumably to underline the childishness of the endeavor, and, then, mist rolling over the mountain.)  Exactly how the frail Lucas, who nearly died of inanition two reels earlier, manages to defeat these tough Icelanders is another mystery that Palmason doesn't bother to solve.  Ultimately, Ragnar, who can speak perfectly fluent "Sunday Danish", demands that Lucas take his picture -- after all, he's been photographing everyone else. Lucas refuses, claiming that he's out of chemicals, and insults Ragnar.  There's another fight which the frail Lucas wins, killing Ragnar in the process.  The weakling Lucas can be pretty strong when the bizarre plot requires this.  At the inaugural church ceremony, Lucas hears Ragnar's dog barking (a baby is also crying) and, in a scene cribbed from Macbeth, darts outside and falls, getting his vestments all muddy.  (No one seems to wonder what has happened to Ragnar who has just disappeared -- I think the explanation is that Ragnar supposedly has departed Carl's ranch for the other side of the island.)  Lucas flees on horseback but he's an inept rider and Carl catches up with him easily.  Carl stabs Lucas to death for no reason that I could figure out and, like his pony, poor Lucas is left out in the elements to decay and "become part of the earth and flowers" as Carl's younger daughter, Inga, says.  (Palmason has cast his own daughter in this role and she's very good.)

The film is shot in old Academy (pillar-box) aspect and its very beautiful -- although, of course, a chimp with a camera could take beautiful landscapes in Iceland.  The people that Lucas films are painted white for the camera and have a funereal aspect -- this relates to the Roland Barth's notion of photography as a mortuary art, a way of embalming the dead.  As in Fargo, there's an opening title that says that the film is based on a box discovered in Iceland containing seven glass plate photographs.  Like the whole film, this is a fraud.  There's a riddle as to whether Lucas could, in fact, have taken a picture of Ragnar, thereby averting the two killings at the end of the film.  I counted the number of pictures that we see Lucas making and come to a total of six (if you don't count a picture Lucas may have taken of the Bishop in Copenhagen which, presumably, would not have been transported to Iceland.  But the number of glass plates actually exposed is a red herring since Lucas says he can't take the photograph of Ragnar because he is out of silver nitrate -- so the number of exposures made, like most everything else, in this comically inept movie means nothing at all.  Lucas is played by an actor who bears a resemblance to the young Max von Sydow in The Seventh Seal -- but an much uglier version of that performer.