Godland has an intriguing title. According to imdb.com, its original Danish title, Vanskabte Land, translates to something like wretched or godforsaken land. This Danish/Icelandic production introduces viewers to a straight-forward story of a young Danish priest whose mission it is to travel to a remote island in Iceland and build a church for the rural community there before winter sets in. A 2022 release that played in theaters in the U.S. this past summer, Godland has garnered many festival awards and critical praise. Currently, it is available for home viewing on disc through Janus Films and The Criterion Collection and also can be streamed.
The time is the late nineteenth century. While the priest’s frock doesn’t tell us much about the time period, the heavy object strapped onto his back certainly does date him. He carries a primitive large and bulky wooden stills camera and tripod and throughout the film takes photographs of the people and animals he encounters. The idea for Godland is based on a handful of photographs of rural Iceland made at that time which have survived.
Father Lucas, played by Danish/American actor Elliott Crosset Hove, has a dour look on his face. When he occasionally smiles, it’s delightful but rare. To date, Hove, in his mid-thirties, has appeared in thirty features and short films. In Godland, for which he also is Executive Producer, his performance is subtle. Other than in the exceptionally good TV series , The Bridge, I am unfamiliar with his work.
Hove has worked repeatedly with Godland’s Iceland native, producer/writer/director Hlynur Palmason. They make quite a team. As an interview with Palmason reveals in the extras on the DVD and Blu-ray, this director is a student of film history. He loves the works of Tarkovsky, Bergman, Kubrick, and Antonioni. From his choice of shots, particularly sunlit views seen though open doors framed by dark indoors, it seems to me he also is influenced by the works of John Ford, especially by The Searchers.
As Godland unfolds, Lucas begins a trek through uninhabited stretches of Iceland with a small caravan of people, horses, supplies, and a dog or two. He is so unprepared for this exploration that he can’t even ride a horse properly. Also indicative of his naïveté is the fact that he insists on bringing a huge, extremely heavy cross which he has the men place on a poor horse’s back.
The first half of the film is filled with the beauties of nature. Occasionally, Lucas captures still images of this incredible untouched world on celluloid. And as time passes, viewers learn about Lucas’s personality and something of the character of the small group’s expeditionary leader, an older man named Ragnar. It is these two men who most will warrant our attention. Once the caravan reaches the settlement where the church will be built, Lucas interacts with a farming family. The more he becomes involved with them, the more he changes. Or maybe he doesn’t change. Maybe his behavior simply becomes more palpable.
Godland tells a tale of a land and its peoples in isolation. There are few markers of civilization. People occasionally sing and dance for fun, they even kiss, but overall, this isn’t a film that focuses on characters’ social interactions. It is a film that focuses on isolation. Some of the images are disturbing, even though they are taken purely from nature. There are no ghosts in Godland but the atmosphere is haunting. There are no characters who are clearly bad guys, but we feel uneasy with certain personalities in certain instances.
Godland is an indication of Hove’s substantial acting ability when pooled with Palmason’s capable direction. I’ll be curious to see more of their combined works.
Audrey Kupferberg is a film and video archivist and retired appraiser. She is lecturer emeritus and the former director of Film Studies at the University at Albany and co-authored several entertainment biographies with her late husband and creative partner, Rob Edelman.
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