Like The Eight Mountains (No 11 on this year’s UK list/No 12 on the US list), Godland is predicated on the construction of a haven in the wilderness – this time, a church on the 19th-century Icelandic coast. Unlike its spiritual sibling in the 2023 film lineup, though, nature is no comfort here, rather an Old Testament-like chastisement in waiting for man’s ambition and hubris. There’s a lot more frightening Herzogian immensity and admonishment here than home-on-the-range John Ford cosiness and sentiment. Nor does director Hlynur Pálmason let himself off the hook: given Lucas, the Danish priest missioned to build a parish, is a photographer, then art’s worth in mediating between man and nature comes under heavy scrutiny too.
Shot with a curt majesty in a boxy 4:3 ratio, to emulate early photography, beauty should be the one consolation here. The film, according to its initial title, was inspired by seven wet-plate photographs found in a box, apparently taken by a real-life Danish priest. Black-sand beaches, scree-filled ravines, fens, volcanic plumes glowering Mordor-like over the horizons – how can we not be as captivated by these elemental vistas as much as Lucas? But as his overland trek wears on, the beauty becomes overpowering, phantasmagorical, redolent of the hostility his Icelandic companions are giving out, and a sign of the inconsequence of his designs. (Played by Elliott Crosset Hove, he joins There Will Be Blood’s Eli Sunday in the annals of pathetic priests.)
It’s a reminder we need, given our climate-wracked times. The western – of which Godland is a tundra-bound version – always takes place on the frontiers of the relationship between man and nature. But Pálmason intensifies the dynamic, holding his aperture open to better absorb the landscape. You wouldn’t put money on man coming out on top here, or contributing much of worth. That wet-plate photographs story? It’s a lie the director made up. Neither art or religion or any other manmade frame can contain nature’s pitilessness, which also rules us. Lucas’s guide Ragnar – an intimidating performance from Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson – has been shaped by these harsh environs, but finally begs the priest for succour. Nothing doing.
Born in Iceland, film-schooled in Denmark, Pálmason also dwells on the relationship between the two countries; Godland takes place in the era when the island was a Danish dependency. And there’s a whiff of Dogme-like vindictiveness in the film’s continual needling of its protagonist, which isn’t just forthcoming from the characters, but seems to emanate from some higher power intent on Job-like sporting with mortals. At least the director/God is still possessed of that famously perverse sense of humour, if nature’s now off the table as divine gift. There have been several good recent films, such as Rams and Lamb, from ecologically sensitive Iceland about man’s place in creation. But Godland is a great one.
