Country of God ★★★½
DRAMA (2022)
Directed by: Hlinur Palmason
Interpretations: Eliot Croshe Howe, Ingvar Sigurdsson

“I wanted to explore the opposites of form and feeling and how they show up when you pit two countries against each other.”

One of the most unusual and at the same time interesting films that we have seen in recent times comes to us from the Icelander Hlinur Palmason, who sends us to his frozen homeland. At the end of the 19th century, a young Danish priest travels to Iceland (then part of Denmark) with the goal of building a church, as well as capturing landscapes and its inhabitants on camera. But as he moves deeper and deeper into a difficult, inhospitable place, his mission and his more general beliefs in life are put to the test until then.

Creatively relying on various sources – from the cinema of Bergman and Werner Herzog to the literature of Graham Greene – Palmasson creates a modestly expressive, but at the same time epic textured film, mainly due to the topics covered in it, as well as its long duration (almost two with half an hour). We follow the priest’s course steadily through a square plan similar to the early cameras he also uses.

Some hail his “invasion” of a nearly untouched world, while others view the Danish visitor with great suspicion. Nature itself seems to oppose him to some extent. However, the hospitality that he will find in the circle of a rural family will warm his heart and at the same time expose him to unprecedented temptations.

All this struggle between divine and human law is one of the main themes of the film, which, however, also explores the problem of communication and the conflicts that its absence causes. The Land of the Gods is set when Iceland was under Danish rule. My life has been divided between these two very different countries, which have shaped me in many ways. I wanted to explore contrasts in environment, temperament and language, or the source of misunderstanding; moreover, the contrasts in form and feel and how they show up when you compare these two countries with each other,” notes the director.

The finale of his film, which also partially adopts the codes of ancient tragedy, is, as it were, an “ode” to mortality, the only feature that really unites not only people, but also their natural environment.