Review: The Stunning Drama 'Godland' Is An Epic Tale Of Ice And Men

Lucas is also an amateur photographer, and the heavy camera on his back suggests that he is not the smartest or most practical minister. Instead of sailing to a safer, faster destination, he decides to hike and bike for miles through the harsh and unforgiving terrain, photographing Icelanders and landscapes along the way. He's artistically impulsive, arrogant, and imperialistic, and will have disastrous consequences for Lucas and those who cross his path.

Lucas, of course, is the unwitting subject of the camera, especially the talented writer-director Glenor Palmason and cinematographer Maria von Hauswulf. Beautifully shot on 35mm film, Godland mimics the look of old photographs with its square frames and rounded edges; A visual option indicating that we discover Iceland and its natural wonders through the eyes of Lucas.

Some scenes seem to have been shot on the priest's shoulder, such as the exact sequence in which he carefully sharpens his photographic plates and cooks them with egg whites. (The film was inspired by seven wet photos taken by a Danish priest, believed to be the first visual recording of the southeastern coast of Iceland.)

But while this is Lucas' mission and his story, it's clearly not fully executed from his point of view. Sometimes Palmason depicts the action from a distance as Ojo de Dios, shadowed by Lucas and his riders on grassy slopes and rocky mountains. Later in the story, editor Julius Krebs Damsbaugh crosses the stops with several short photomontages, focusing on a patch of desert or the remains of a dead horse, as if to remind us of impermanence and cosmic insignificance. It's all alive

The camera occasionally catches the silent, disdainful gaze of Ragnar (Ingvar Eggert Sigurdsson), the Icelandic farmer assigned to steer Lucas north. For if God's people are a cruel epic of man against nature, it also pits man against man.

Ragnar, to whom riding a horse and crossing a river is second nature, has despised Lucas from the moment they meet, and the animosity is more than mutual. It doesn't help that Lucas speaks Icelandic, while Ragnar can't or won't speak Danish. (Its superb translator, played by Hilmar Gönsson, does the job, as does the film's carefully crafted English translation.) He knows the region and its principal dangers, and knows that only a fool would attempt to endure it or stoop to it. his will

Lucas possesses no such knowledge, let alone self-knowledge, and his barely surviving journey (without at least one passenger) is a record of violent hubris, reckless stupidity, and abject failure. And Crossett Howe's performance, stripped of all charm, is an excellent, if unpleasant, reminder of the difference between hero and hero. Kindness and patience, among other requirements of Christian ministry, are seldom seen in Lucas' wrinkled, grave face, his intense gaze, and the occasional death glare. He seems to show no interest in the locals he meets and sometimes photographs. Iceland itself, with its stunning rock formations, waterfalls, and stunning sunsets, is appropriately magical, but that only applies to its sights, not its nature.

Les Goodland is Palmon's first exploration of sociopathy in cold isolation; And it's not the first time Crossett has worked well with Hove and Sigurdsson. (You can see them in the director's previous films, The Winter Brothers and White, White Day. This film, More Than Silence, is Shusaku Endo's 17th spiritual assignment to Portuguese missionaries.

Unsurprisingly, it's also a story about the willful blindness of colonialism, building on Palmasson's dual identity as an Icelandic-born filmmaker who studied and lived in Denmark for many years. From the opening scene, in which Lucas is instructed by an elderly priest, the relationship between the ruling Danish rulers and the island's supposed subjects, desperate for order, civilization, and God, if underestimated, is shown.

When Lucas arrives at the settlement and begins the arduous work of building a church, that assumption is quietly and surgically dismantled. Although his routines are lighter and more physically challenging than his travels, they don't seem designed to expose all of his flaws and weaknesses. Lucas spends his time recuperating at the home of farmer Karl (the wonderful Jacob Lohmann), who, unlike Ragnar, measures the priest with great precision. Carl's two daughters, the young Ida (Ida Meckin Hlinsdottir) and, more importantly, the older, married Anna (Vic Carmen Son), despise the visitor, even as they act out their roles in the drama. Bad end goal for him

This inevitability may catch the film by surprise in its bleak final moments, which isn't to say that the rest of this always-funny movie is easy to predict or pinpoint. While many of Lucas' parishioners claim a weary indifference to God, Palmason himself seems to take a more ambivalent position. The problem, however, with this priest, one of them, may not be an excess of spiritual ardor, but a lack thereof, a disrespect for the beauty which Palmon's camera brings out in every masterful shot. Lucas may be a blind inept, but his faltering creativity is a source of endless wonder.