Fast-Forward Theater: Godforsaken

 A couple of valiant but off-key efforts that require some skipping through.

 

GODLAND (C+) - Life can seem like endless drudgery. Movies should be an escape from that. Or if you must present us with a humorless slog, go all in -- like Bela Tarr did with "The Turin Horse." Otherwise, get on with it!

Hlynur Palmason follows up his sharp and acerbic 2019 effort "A White White Day" with this dreary tale of a priest at the end of the 19th century trudging from Denmark to a remote part of Iceland to oversee construction of a church. It clocks in at a rubenesque 2 hours 23 minutes, and you'll miss nearly nothing if you fast-forward through these plodding (at times literally) scenes. Sure, you'll miss some amazing scenery, but then you're probably watching it on a small screen. (If you find it somewhere on the big screen, instead of fast-forwarding, you can periodically nap.)

Elliott Crosset Hove has the limp charisma of a bygone British stockbroker in his portrayal of Lucas, the priest who apparently drew the short straw and must trek from Denmark by sea and then across the forbidding Icelandic landscape, all while toting a newfangled tripod-mount camera that he will use to create portraits of those he meets along the way. The film apparently was inspired by the recent discovery on the coast of Iceland of some old wet-plate photographs. Now that might have made for an interesting documentary.

 

Instead, we follow the pale-skinned, soft-boned Lucas put through the paces of a rugged journey, even after camp is set up in the middle of nowhere. One man dies along the way. Lucas is then overseen by a gruff older man, Ragnar, played by Ingvar Sigurdsson, the catalyst of "A White White Day," who nearly rescues the film with his character's rough interpersonal skills. The second half of the film brightens, as Lucas falls for a local man's daughter, Anna (Vic Carmen Sonne), the older of two sisters who are on the market for a husband.

But this is all destined to end in gloom. I appreciated Palmason's nod to nature throughout. A time-lapse shot of a horse decomposing over winter and into spring brought to mind Michelangelo Frammartino's elegiac seasonal ode "Le Quatro Volte." And the depiction of the photography sessions are quaint and touching. But there's not enough story here to constitute anything more than a slide show or warrant spending this much time questioning whether God would put any of us through this dirge called life.

DESPERATE SOULS, DARK CITY AND THE LEGEND OF MIDNIGHT COWBOY (C+) - This is a sloppy, maniacally edited homage to the notorious and beloved X-rated film from 1969, John Schlesinger's gritty "Midnight Cowboy." Its critical flaw is a failure to convey a true sense of the film itself while employing a visual style that may induce nausea.

Nancy Buirski, who has a sketchy track record ("The Loving Story," "Afternoon of a Faun," "The Rape of Recy Taylor"), is all about mood and quick hits and less about thoughtful examinations of the subject film and the story behind it. You might come away knowing as little about the movie -- controversial at the time for its realistic depictions of a grimy New York and for a storyline that involves a hustler who engages in gay sex -- as you ever have been. The choice of talking heads can be curious, too. She lets writer Lucy Sante ramble on, to the extent that Sante at one point pauses a monologue and asks the camera, "So, where was I going with this story?"

Buirski is fond of showing clips from the movie and from its predecessors but without sound and with the talking heads prattling on over the images. And she insists on providing added perspective through a blizzard of nonstop stock images from the '50s and '60s, many you've seen before. They come in such short, quick bursts that the effect is dizzying. For no apparent reason there is a fraction of a second glimpse of comedian Mort Sahl onstage and then on to dozens more images in the next minute. The interview of talking heads is equally odd -- shaky extreme close-ups that often go in and out of focus. 

We get a lot of Jon Voight here but no Dustin Hoffman, except (like with the director, Schlesinger) excerpts from previous interviews, all poorly recorded on tape. I was tempted to suggest that you just go back and watch the movie instead of this mish-mash, but when I viewed the scenes of Hoffman's Ratso Rizzo, I wonder if I can handle such a hammy Method performance a half century later. Maybe this whole exercise should remain in its Boomer crypt.