“Land of God”
Manager: hlynur palmason
artists: Elliott Crosset Hove, Ingvar Eggert Sigurosson, Victoria Carmen Sonne, Jacob Lohman
Year: 2022
Premiere: 11 August 2023
★★★★
Some viewers may lose patience with the dramatic seriousness, narrative and stylistic simplicity of ‘Godland’, the third film in the USA. hlynur palmason. The rest will be captivated and whipped up by an epic that, yes, evokes references like Herzog, Bergman, Dreyer, ‘Zama’ or ‘Silencio’, and even offers ‘slapstick’ flashes in the process. As Pálmason continues to reflect on masculinity already brought up in “Winter Brothers” and “A White, White Day,” she explores topics such as religion and belief, sacrifice, and the destructive arrogance that motivates every urge to colonize.
He plays the lead role of a Danish priest who travels to Iceland at the end of the 19th century to build a church and meanwhile photograph the country and its people, but becomes distracted as he is consumed by it. an unforgiving environment -the film turns into overwhelming images-, arrogance and emotions that he doesn’t know how to control. His journey is observed through a bifurcated narrative that reflects the conflict between Iceland’s telluric power and the Christian understanding of God, and his desire to conquer, embodied by Denmark, but satisfied on his behalf, at least embodied in ‘Godland’ for most of its footage. It pays less attention to historical judgments than to remind us of the insignificance of man vis-à-vis nature and what happens when this hierarchy is attempted to be reversed.