Godland (2022)

[FrancesannaM24]

Hello all!

I was wondering if anyone has seen Godland (2022) dir. Hlynur Pálmason and cinematography by Maria von Hausswolff? I finally managed to watch it yesterday and was amazed by the cinematography.

The film follows a priest who is also a wet plate photographer in late 19c Iceland on a mission to build a church and photograph the inhabitants of the island. The way that the cinematography engages with the history of stills photography is very interesting – and just from a practical point of view it’s an incredible feat to have created such a beautiful film in the conditions they did.

Kodak did a write up about it if anyone is interested: https://www.kodak.com/en/motion/blog-post/godland/

I’d love to hear other peoples thoughts on it if anyone has seen it! If not, i’d highly recommend watching it. Unfortunately I missed seeing it in the cinema, so I watched it on DVD, I think it’s maybe available on Curzon home cinema now too.

Thanks and I hope everyone has a nice weekend!

Topic

[Max A.]

Hello Francesanna, If I can join in this conversation, I saw the film yesterday after reading your topic. In my opinion, the movie is really great. The slow pace gives the whole movie a narrative depth (always in my opinion). Some camera movements are really intense, especially for the long pans or tracking shots.
The locations are insane and while I saw it sometimes I thought about the difficulties they faced in making those shots. I’m not a purist or film critic, I simply react to what I see, and looking at everything that is produced today for platforms and for high consumption, I find that it is quite rare to find producers intent on producing a similar film, it was absolutely worth it.

About cinematography, always in my opinion and to talk together about the movie, actually I’m not a huge fan of 4:3 aspect ratio, because I think that is a sort of “trend” that cinematographers want to follow (I really don’t love trends) but, in this movie is part of the story and to me enrich the narrative of the movie. I think that if the film had been shot in 1:85 or 2:35 it would have lost a crucial feature of the storytelling, so in this case, the aspect ratio (in my opinion) is really at the service of the story and enhances the narrative.
The compositions are really awesome. The movie has a photographic world in which it always remains faithful without betraying it, and this for me is the highest value. There is (in my opinion) always the cinematographer’s research to have the right light and not the “beautiful” one. It’s a very subtle step to think of a shot to make it aesthetically “beautiful”, then losing what should be the photographic essence of the film. I think Maria Von Hausswolff really nailed it!
Some interiors remind me of some paintings by Carl Holsøe. I loved also the color palettes of the scenes as well as the stunning weather conditions of the exteriors.

So this is just my opinion, thank you for suggesting this movie, I really enjoyed it!

I apologize for my English.
Have a nice day,

Max.

[Author]

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