Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 11/17/24

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Sunday, November 17, 2024

Godland (Hlynur Pálmason, 2022)

Cast: Elliott Crosset Hove, Ingvar Sigurdsson, Vic Carmen Sonne, Jacob Lohmann, Hilmar Guðjónsson, Waage Sandø, Ída Mekkín Hlynsdóttir. Screenplay: Hlynur Pálmason. Cinematography: Maria Von Hausswolff. Production design: Frosti Fridrikkson. Film editing: Julius Krebs Damsbo. Music: Alex Zhang Hungtai.

Godland is the age-old tale of man against the elements, as a Danish preacher, Lucas (Elliott Crosset Hove), makes his way across the unforgiving landscape of Iceland to a place where he plans to build a church for the settlers. He is working with a guide, Ragnar (Ingvar Sigurdsson), who doesn't (or won't) speak Danish, so he relies on an interpreter played by Hilmar Guðjónsson until the interpreter is drowned in a river crossing that Lucas stubbornly insists on. From then on, he's in Ragnar's hands, and he will be until the fated ending of the film. When they reach the settlement he finds shelter with Carl (Jacob Lohmann) and his two daughters, Anna (Vic Carmen Sonne) and Ida (Ída Mekkín Hlynsdóttir. director Hlynur Pálmason's actual daughter). Since the settlement is near the coast, Carl wonders why Lucas has taken such a long overland route. Lucas explains that he wanted to get a feeling for the land and to photograph it: The crew has hauled his bulky photographic equipment all the way. From then on, it's a story of Lucas against Ragnar and to some extent Carl, who wants to protect his daughters, especially the marriageable Anna, against the priest. Cinematographer Maria Von Hausswolff provides spectacular images, viewed not in the widescreen panoramas usually called on for such photogenic landscapes, but in the old, narrow Academy ratio that was standard in movies until the 1950s, when the film industry decided to compete with television with techniques like CinemaScope. The images in Godland even have rounded corners, an evocation of the wet-plate photography used by Lucas. The film is technically dazzling, a visual tour de force, but I just wish it moved me more. Too often it feels like the creation of a gifted and imaginative director out to display his gifts rather than one who wants to tell a story and evoke human emotions.