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.)
