There is no such thing as a 'land' mode.
What happened in this case, is that the pilots wanted to demonstrate the Airbus feature where the aircraft sets TO/GA thrust irrespective of thrust lever position on approaching the stall.
They forgot, however, that this feature is disabled below 100' (to allow for speed loss in the flare).
Now they had the thrust levers in the idle position, waiting for the aircraft to set TO/GA thrust. Exactly as supposed to, it didn't. And they crashed. Nothing to do with the infamous "plane thinking it was going to land" or the "aircraft stuck in landing mode."
If they had pushed the thrust levers forward instead of waiting for the aircraft to add thrust, nothing would've happened. In other words, they should've thought about how the system works before doing completely non-standard things at low level.