The Promised Land

Nikolaj Arcel's The Promised Land is a sturdily dependable, if unexciting, historical epic. The film concerns one Ludvig Kalen who we meet in 1755 in a dingy Danish flophouse for veterans. Kalen, played by Arcel's frequent collaborator Mads Mikkelsen has just served twenty years in the Prussian army under Frederick the Great, finishing his service as a Captain and earning himself a small pension. We eventually learn he is the bastard son of a nobleman and was sent abroad into military service to be got rid of. Kalen has a scheme to farm the Jutland heath, a large barren part of the Danish Kingdom that has resisted efforts at cultivation. With meagre support from the government, Kalen and a motley band of outsiders scorch the moss off the heath and try to plant a crop. However, they earn the enmity of a cruel local landowner (played by Simon Bennebjerg in mad King Ludwig mode) who wants to claim the land for himself.

The film is handsome, well mounted, and well acted, if somewhat predictable. If you've seen Arcel's A Royal Affair, also with Mikkelsen, you will know what to expect from the get go. Arcel and Anders Thomas Jensen, another frequent collaborator of Mikklesen's, adapted their script from Ida Jessen's novel. If I prefer the films Jensen directs to those of Arcel, it is because they have more vivacity and humor. Too much of both A Royal Affair and The Promised Land consists of stolid historical tableaux. Even the cartoon villainy is too pat. A Promised Land does have a little humor, at the expense of Kalen's discomfort with high society and the fairer sex, but not enough to leaven its deterministic class critique.

The Promised Land went by another title in Danish: Bastarden which better summarizes the film's positing of Kalen as an outsider who can never fully integrate into Danish society. A theme the picture somewhat ham handedly underlines by the presence of Romani migrants. Whatever petty issues I have with this flick, I eagerly await any picture with Mikkelsen as one of the leads. Not even the children and animals in The Promised Land can steal a scene from him. He is one of the premier leading men of our era.