Winter Brothers (Hlynur Pálmason, 2017)

Elliott Crosset Hove in Winter Brothers

Cast: Elliott Crosset Hove, Simon Sears, Vic Carmen Sonne, Lars Mikkelsen, Peter Plaugborg, Michael Brostrup, Anders Hove, Birgit Thøt Jensen, Laurits Honoré Rønne, Frédéric André. Screenplay: Hlynur Pálmason. Cinematography: Maria von Hausswolff. Production design: Gustav Potoppidan. Film editing: Julius Krebs Damsbo. Music: Toke Brorson Odin. 

Hlynur Pálmason's Winter Brothers begins in darkness, with a few lights shuttling around in the blackness that eventually reveal that we are in a mine, part of the limestone quarry and chalk factory that forms the setting for the film. It's a way of setting up the contrast of dark and light that gives the film its peculiar power. This is a bleak setting for wintry lives, particularly those of the brothers, Emil (Elliott Crosset Hove) and Johan (Simon Sears), who work in the factory. There's not much story to be told in the movie beyond delineating the tensions that exist between the brothers, the unsettled Emil and the more stoic Johan, but Pálmason, with the significant aid of Maria von Hasswolff's cinematography, provides a darkly poetic vision of figures in a forbidding landscape. 

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.