Godland (Icelandic: Volaða land, Danish: Vanskabte Land, lit. 'Malformed Land') is a 2022 drama film written and directed by Hlynur Pálmason. Set in the late 19th century, the film stars Elliott Crosset Hove as Lucas, a Lutheran priest from Denmark who is sent to Iceland to oversee the establishment of a new parish church, only to have his faith tested and challenged by the harsh conditions of rural life, including his inability as a monolingual Danish-language speaker to communicate with his assigned Icelandic guide, Ragnar (Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson).
In the late 19th century, Danish priest Lucas is tasked with traveling to Iceland (at the time a Danish territory) and building a church in a Danish settlement.[3] He takes a camera to document the land and travels by boat with several Icelandic laborers and a translator, who is Lucas's only ally and connection to the rest of the group. When they arrive, they meet their guide, Ragnar, who harbors a distrust of Danes.
While traveling, the group encounters a deep and raging river that, despite Ragnar's warnings, Lucas insists they ford. Both the translator and a large cross fall off his horses, and the translator drowns. They bury him in a shallow grave that is soon unearthed by the rising tide. Grief-stricken Lucas becomes withdrawn and sullen, praying for God to allow him to return to Denmark. He faints from exhaustion and falls off his horse, and the group has to carry him the rest of the way on a makeshift stretcher. Later, the group is shown to have arrived at the settlement where Lucas is nursed back to health by a man named Carl and his daughters, Anna and Ida.
The village comes together to build the church and celebrates occasions within it. When a couple marries, Lucas refuses to perform the ceremony as the church is yet unfinished. During the wedding reception, traditional wrestling games are played and Carl chooses to go against Lucas, who wins and is then made to fight Ragnar, where there is a palpable tension.
As Lucas befriends Ida and develops an attraction to Anna, his horse goes missing and is later shown to be dead. When the church is completed, Ragnar finds Lucas outside the village and requests that a photo of him be taken before he leaves, but Lucas refuses and insults him. Ragnar makes a confession in Danish, including confirming that he had killed Lucas's horse. Lucas snaps and attacks him, bashing Ragnar's head against the rocks and killing him. Lucas returns to Anna and discards his camera equipment, and the two have sex. Carl warns Anna not to get involved with Lucas.
During Lucas's first service in the finished church, Ragnar's dog interrupts by continuously barking outside. When he goes out to quiet it, he slips in mud and dirties his robes and face. Lucas steals one of Ida's horses and flees. Carl pursues him despite Anna's request that he not harm Lucas. Carl catches up to Lucas and stabs him to death, saying that everyone will believe he simply fell off the horse. Some time later, Ida finds Lucas's skeleton and tearfully tells him that he will soon be part of nature.
In the opening of the film, a title card states "A box was found in Iceland with seven wet plate photographs taken by a Danish priest. These images are the first photographs of the southeast coast. This film is inspired by these photographs." However, these images never existed. Hlynur invented the story to help inspire the filmmaking process. As part of the filming, several wet plate photographs were taken, one of which was used for the film's poster.[9][10]
It was distributed by Sena in Iceland; Scanbox Entertainment in Denmark;[12] Folkets Bio in Sweden;[13]
and Jour2Fête in France.[14]
Godland was released in Denmark on 1 December 2022.[15] It was released in cinemas as well as on Curzon Home Cinema in the UK on 7 April 2023,[16] and in Australian cinemas on 17 August 2023.[17]
Reception
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 92% of 66 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8/10. The website's consensus reads: "Necessarily bleak but shot through with moments of humor, the beautifully filmed Godland serves as a gently absorbing meditation on mortality."[18]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 81 out of 100, based on 21 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[19]
Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian gave it five out of five stars, calling it "an extraordinary film... breathtaking in its epic scale, magnificent in its comprehension of landscape, piercingly uncomfortable in its human intimacy and severity". He wrote that it brings to mind such films as Werner Herzog's Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Roland Joffé's The Mission, among others.[16] Paul Byrnes of The Sydney Morning Herald called it "bone-chilling, eye-dazzling, heart-wrenching... and one of the best films of the year".[17]
