By John Barrett

This gaunt historical narrative examines “love and faith and the fear of God” while also taking on issues of colonialism and masculinity. For the most part, the grand scheme is pulled off.

Godland, directed by Hlynur Pálmason.  Screening at The Brattle through May 9.

Elliott Crosset Hove in a scene from Godland.

Icelandic director Hlynur Pálmason’s third feature, Godland (Icelandic: Volaða land, Danish: Vanskabte Land), is nothing if not ambitious, thematically and visually. The director has set himself the task of creating a gaunt historical narrative that examines “love and faith and the fear of God,” while also taking on issues of colonialism and masculinity. For the most part, the grand scheme is pulled off.

The plot revolves around Lucas, a Danish priest played by Elliott Crosset Hove, who gives one of  the most haunted (and I do mean haunted) performances since Klaus Kinski in Aguirre, Wrath of God. Lucas decides to cross Iceland overland in order to, as he says, get to know and photograph the land and its people. He does little of either. On their journey, he and the team of native Icelanders, who are tasked with bringing the priest to the site where a new church is to be built, are dwarfed by the immense and often terrifying beauty of the landscape.

Along the route, Lucas’s translator dies and Lucas himself falls deathly ill. He awakens in the house of Carl (Jacob Lehmann), a farmer with two daughters, where he was brought by Ragnar, the team’s guide and leader, for whom Lucas has little regard, let alone respect.

As the church nears completion, Lucas is increasingly consumed by doubt, by emotions he clearly cannot manage. It is a process of devolution that brings him close to animality. The comparisons are obvious, but despite similarities to Herzog’s obsessives, the director is not making a derivative work or a pastiche of other films that deal with the derangement of a lone religious searcher. Yes, there are moments that evoke the efforts of Bergman or Dreyer. For instance, a close-up on Anna, Carl’s eldest daughter (played by Vic Carmen Sonne), seems to be a direct reference to Falconetti in The Passion of Joan of Arc. But sometimes a close-up is, after all, just a close-up.

Placed in the company of Bergman, Herzog, or Tarkovsky, Pálmason’s film stands as a near-masterpiece, late 19th-century Romanticism refracted through 21st-century modernism. Pálmason’s characters aren’t just characters; they embody thematic types that shift and change over the course of the narrative. They struggle in the context of a natural magnificence that overwhelms them.

Initially, Lucas is a  self-possessed young priest driven by a mission to spread the word of God to the remote areas of Iceland. But that is only the mask for a man who is revealed to be impatient, dismissive, fearful, and soon far out of his depth. He is consumed by arrogance and trauma. His lack of preparation, his distinct want of interest in the Icelanders — who have been sent by the church to help him — is a reflection of the destructive hubris of the colonizer. In contrast, Ragnar, who saves Lucas’s life, resents both him and his Christian mission. However, unlike Lucas, Ragnar grows in humility: he has a genuine desire for some kind of spiritual absolution.

That might suggest that Lucas is positioned as a stand-in for all colonizers, while Ragnar is symbolic of the colonized. But Pálmason is far subtler than that. Godland questions the Christian conception of God through its critique of evangelism as a means of conquest. Lucas’s faith takes a battering when he prays to God to release him from his mission. In prayer he tells God, “You are not needed here.” Increasingly, Lucas uses his faith to mask his uncertainty, as a means to assuage what he cannot explain. When Ida, Carl’s younger daughter, asks Lucas if he knows God, he says “Yes.” When she probes further about how she can meet Him — because of course, the relationship must be different for her than for Lucas — Lucas tells her that faith is like believing in magic. He says it sincerely, but a cruel irony hangs in the air.

Before Lucas has arrived at the Danish settlement, he insists that he “has no voice.” This is literally true, given that his translator has died tragically. But it is also an indication that the man cannot be clear or candid with anyone, even himself. This could be seen as a symptom of his PTSD, but it is also the indifference embraced by a class that has come to bring civilization and religion to barbarians.

To his credit, Pálmason doesn’t descend into scoring easy points against the oppressor. Ida (a supremely charming Ída Mekkín Hlynsdóttir) and Anna infuse much needed levity into the story’s dourness. The thematic heaviness is also undercut by the film’s magisterial beauty. Carl tells Lucas at one point that he feels “we are small and fleeting.” Man’s microscopic stature is adroitly dramatized by cinematographer Maria von Hausswolff’s camera; humans are continually diminished in god’s-eye zoom outs or as we watch them, dwarfed to insignificance, wander out of frame — as in one remarkable 360 pan.

Pálmason isn’t polemical — until the end.  A bombastic, sardonic use of the Danish national anthem pops up in the conclusion. It is an indictment of the aggression of patriotism/nationalism, the devastation that follows the invasion, occupation, and exploitation of foreign lands. (Denmark imposed Lutheranism on Iceland, which was dominated by the larger country for much of its history.) Thankfully, this heavy-handedness — the message has already been sent with much more nuance — is overwhelmed by Godland‘s staggering visuals.

John Barrett is a painter, printmaker, and writer living (for the moment, anyway) in Houston. He is definitely looking forward to returning to New England in the near future and back to Asia later this year. He has written for the Somerville News, Tai Chi magazine, and random joints here and there. Like everyone else in this world, he maintains his own little bit of the internet at Reaction Shots.