Thoughts from the committee
An unflinching, uncomfortable exploration of the colonial relationship between Iceland and Denmark, Godland is the fictionalised true story of Danish priest Lucas (Elliott Crosset Hove), a pioneer in two senses – both a frontierist sent by God to “civilise” the Icelandic locals and an amateur photographer and demographer at the turn of the century, who crams posed shots of calico-clad settler society into an icy, volcanic backdrop through his viewfinder. Lucas is allocated grizzled, Dane-hating Ragnar (Ingvar Sigurdsson) as a guide as he crosses the inhospitably windswept, foggy Icelandic interior, riven by engorged rivers and billowing volcanic cloud, on horseback to reach the western coast, where most of the settler population has moved to escape the ash and stench of the volcano.
The Icelandic landscape lends its stark beauty to the curved corners of Hlynur Pálmason’s 4:3 camera – neatly reflecting Lucas’ prints, which chronicle his descent into exhaustion, madness and violence, fed by Ragnar’s competent provocations and punctuated by choral and folk music of the era. Godland is a visual and human epic, a big-screen portrait of a history not well-known outside Iceland and Denmark, and not yet well-understood anywhere.
“There’s a strong element of myth and magic at work here too […] It all adds to the film’s haunting appeal, leaving the viewer with a sense of being engulfed by a landscape in which cultures collide – the incarnate and the infinite forever butting heads, neither willing to concede hard-won ground.” – Mark Kermode, The Guardian