Swanvale Halt Film Club: Godland (2022)

To say that any movie with very little dialogue but lots of landscape always meets with critical acclaim may be a bit cynical but it does seem to be a general rule. I am not sure there is all that much skill involved in taking static shots of mountains, and I found the facility on the VLC video player to skip forward ten seconds very helpful, but the performances in Godland are impressive, especially as the actors have so little to work with. 

It may be true that we have little real idea why people behave the way they do, as we tend to know only small slices of their lives and experiences, but a movie that leaves us to make up almost everything about what might conceivably motivate the characters we watch is of limited help in developing our sympathy for others. The reviews of Godland show how people even seem to see something different from me. Anna the elder daughter of the leading citizen of the tiny Danish settlement on Iceland which is the destination and charge of young Lutheran priest Lucas 'seduces' the clergyman, says one: as the 'seduction' consists of him leading her into his darkened house and then her head and shoulders seen in red light, that doesn't seem like an accurate description of the event.

Why is Lucas such a disastrous priest? As his host Carl points out, he chooses to take the most difficult possible route to the village rather than just sail there, supposedly to get to know the country and 'meet people', which he doesn't. The experience of conflict, causing someone's death, and sickness on the journey, clearly break him before his ministry even starts, but he appears to have no spiritual resources to bring to bear on the experience. His prayers are muttered in private and we never see him successfully carry out a single religious act, even before he begins. Reviewers clearly want to read him as a naive, pious priest 'eager to save souls' (as one says) who comes up against reality in a far-flung landscape 'like so many colonial clergy'. But we never see any evidence of his evangelistic eagerness, and every time anyone actually seeks his spiritual advice, including the man who becomes his enemy, Icelander guide Ragnar, he brushes them away. When did this begin? We never gain any insight, just have it presented to us.

Late 19th-century Iceland may have been, in a broad sense, a Danish colony (though it had been granted significant self-government in 1874), but it was hardly any more a pagan territory than, say, Middlesbrough at the same time. The island had been technically Christian since 1000 and by the high Middle Ages was as thoroughly Christianised as anywhere else. Its patron saint, Thorlak, was a 12th-century bishop now retrospectively thought of as the patron also of people with autism. Until Lucas proves himself completely incapable of doing what he's there for, it's not as though the villagers don't want the ministrations of a priest. They co-operate in building the church, two want to get married there and when Lucas refuses because it's not ready and they have an informal sort-of handfasting the villagers still include him in the party, and they all turn up to worship on the first day.  No, this is someone who was broken before he started, but we never have a hint why in a film that exchanges spectacle for understanding.