Valley of the Gods – An Aimless Walk Through Mundane Self-Discovery

Valley of the Gods follows the story of copywriter John Ecas (Hartnett) who undertakes the task of writing the biography of the richest man on Earth, trillionaire Wes Tauros (Malkovich), who has made it his goal to mine the sacred lands of the Navajo for its uranium. The struggle between the lore of long-standing tradition and modern advancements are confronted as Ecas grips with his own life issues in contrast.

To be honest, it took two days to digest what I saw to even try to find the words to describe Valley of the Gods and all I can come up with is: what. Not even a question, or a remark, but a statement of what. That is what this film is. It’s merely a collection of unexplainable, unclassifiable moments brought together by stunning visual landscapes. It is most comparable to the love child of Brazil and Hostiles if directed by David Lynch.

The film is admittedly beautiful to look at. It contains sublime, immersive cinematography for its character moments paralleled by idyllic scenes of the red rock mountains in the Valley of the Gods and futuristic cityscapes. That is unfortunately the only positive to be had here. Meanwhile, Valley of the Gods is memorable in other ways, mostly for its confusing and muddled attempt at delivering a coherent story.

As it stands, the narrative consistently jump back and forth between different characters and their individual journeys, but their stories, while technically connected, feel so distant from one another that it becomes hard to truly focus and enjoy the narrative as one coherent entity. The story consists of a collection of chapters dealing with love, life, the economic class system, faith and tradition and the consumerism problems in modern society. All of this inevitably amounts to a sort of commentary on the 1% and the Navajo community in relation to those aforementioned themes, but it becomes lost in translation thanks to outdated tropes and stereotypes while never making a strong or lasting statement.

Also, who did John Malkovich owe a favour in order to be cast into this? He is a way better actor than his limited character gives us and yet the filmmakers waste the ability to use his full range. In fact, most of the cast including Hartnett and John Rhys-Davies as Dr. Hermann are much better than what they are given here. It’s as if the story seemingly didn’t go through enough drafts to fully develop the characters or they were told to tone down their emotions to place the focus on the Navajo people.

The problem is, the story that so desperately wants to show this community ends up bastardizing it on an aimless walk through the Valley of the Gods.

still courtesy of Well Go USA Entertainment

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Dylan Phillips