Hylnur Palmason
Godland - Nella terra di Dio

Hylnur Palmason, exactly 40 years old, is an Icelandic director to watch. He has done few things, all beautiful, including "A White, White Day" (2019) which showed promise. Sure, it wasn't reasonable to expect a semi-masterpiece shortly thereafter, but "Godland" (2022, released in Italy on January 5, 2023), in fact, is one. And it is surprisingly so given that it is a completely timeless film, a work that if it had been released in the '70s with the signature of Werner Herzog (of whom he has always been an admirer, and who he cites abundantly in "Godland") would be considered an absolute cult on par with "Aguirre" or, better, "Fitzcarraldo."

At the end of the 19th century, a young Lutheran priest is sent to Iceland, at the time a remote (and inhospitable, I would say) region of the Kingdom of Denmark. "Armed" only with a camera, a lot of good will, and having accepted the task of overseeing the construction of a religious building, he will see, in that immense space made of ice, cold, wind, and too much light, his religious conviction wane and will question all his certainties about the existence of God and the high and ultimate value of Faith.

In two hours and twenty minutes of film, Palmason leads us by the hand into a world so inhospitable that it becomes (perhaps) fascinating, alternating reflective and slow sequences with others more dynamic and full of pathos (the sequence of being unable to cross the watercourse due to rain and still wanting to succeed, challenging nature, and thus God, is exemplary) in which the protagonist's doubts (who is accompanied by a local guide on the journey) are, in essence, the doubts that any human being might have, thrown into such a place, amplified by the fact that our protagonist is a religious man. Palmason seems to say that, in the end, believer or not, nature could challenge anyone due to our legitimate human weaknesses. It's like in Herzog's "Fitzcarraldo," the search for something and the continuous getting lost.

Shot in an unusual format for modern cinema (1.33:1, the screen is essentially square), it uses this shooting system in the best possible way: the men almost never leave the scene, but their silhouette against frozen lakes or semi-deserted lands makes some scenes look more like 18th or 19th-century paintings, a time when there was debate (or at least artists were accustomed to it) about the smallness of the helpless, defenseless human being, against a nature inherently depicted as hostile and elusive. Just as some passages seem to come from German novels of that era. Between Goethe and Darwin, between the discovery of a world that can not only be seen but also immortalized (photography had been born only a few years), Palmason transports us into a late romantic world that owes much, cinematographically, to the aforementioned Herzog and to some documentary forms such as from "Man of Aran" (1934) or Flaherty's "Nanook of the North" (1922).

Then there are those who have seen Terence Malick and Scorsese's "Silence" in it, but it is a film so full of beauty and, paradoxically, life that, I believe, everyone can see what they want in it. A must-see at all costs.