Anyone I know who has ever visited Iceland tells me that it has the most spectacular scenery. Godland’s irresistible cinematography, by Maria von Hausswolff, takes full measure of this, with the landscape featuring as an additional character and inspiring some of the most beautiful moments on film I have ever seen. If the image is to swoon for, this is countermanded by the bleak storyline, which narrates the journey of Lucas, a naive priest, as he travels from Denmark to a remote Icelandic settlement charged with constructing a church before the onset of winter. Lucas’ journey reminded me in some ways of an antipodean rival, Aguirre, with the knowledge that this mission is doomed to end badly. Another film which came to mind was Martel’s Zama, and there is plenty in the dreamy, loopy camerawork to compare to Martel’s epic. The film is split into two parts - Lucas’ journey to the settlement and his stay at the settlement. He is brought back from the dead, only to find that madness stalks his heels, and the presence of the comely daughter of the settlement’s head honcho serves to complicate matters. However, in so many ways the narrative is a secondary aspect of the film’s ambitions, which seem, as the title suggests, to range further, unto a meditation on the possibility of the divine, something which nature possesses to a degree humanity, cut off from nature, can never aspire to. Godland, with its mighty cascades, soaring peaks and virulent volcano feels like it could be classed as a pantheistic film, one where it is nature as much as man who kills (a man swept away by a raving river, a head crushed under rock), where the bones of the dead will be absorbed and cleansed by the soil as it proceeds at its own pace, which has nothing to do with the rushed rhythms of humanity.
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