Mads Mikkelsen is that rare blend of leading man and character actor. Like Willem Dafoe, he is comfortable playing bad guys and weirdos but can also gracefully slip into the role of the main protagonist. American audiences most likely know the Danish actor for his appearances in big-screen franchises such as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Harry Potter, Stars Wars, James Bond and the most recent Indiana Jones film. Even in these tentpole blockbusters, Mikkelsen retains a stoic dignity while playing evil Nazis, conflicted scientists and dimension-hopping villains. But beyond playing Dr. Hannibal Lecter in the Hannibal television series, most of Mikkelsen’s leading work occurs in European cinema.
After rising to fame in the early part of the century as part of a new wave of Danish cinema, Mikkelsen has starred as a fierce Norse warrior in Valhalla Rising (2009); a teacher wrongly accused of pedophilia in The Hunt (2012); part of an illicit royal love triangle in the costume drama A Royal Affair (2012) and an educator who experiments with maintaining a certain level of drunkenness in Another Round (2020). In each of these films, and many others, Mikkelsen commands complete attention when on the screen. This is also the case in The Promised Land, which reunites the actor with Nikolaj Arcel, his A Royal Affair director.
Mikkelsen stars as Ludvig Kahlen, a former soldier who hopes to make a name for himself cultivating the inhospitable land of Denmark’s Jutland heath. It is 1755 and Kahlen, who has just spent 25 years as a captain in the German Army, believes he can tame the land in the name of the Danish king. The heath is a barren place, with infertile soil and unpredictable weather. It is also home to brigands who will rob and murder anyone trying to establish themselves. But Kahlen is determined and soon obtains permission from the Royal Danish Court to set up a homestead there.
Kahlen isn’t a well-regarded war hero. He is instead the illicit product of a maid and the plantation owner she served. By taming the heath, Kahlen is hoping for legitimacy. The king’s advisers scoff at him with derision, but if Kahlen is willing to sacrifice himself in order to succeed, it will curry the monarch’s favor. So, with the promise of a title and estate, they send him off to most certain destruction.
At first, Kahlen is portrayed as a remorseless bastard. He kills a man who is attempting to rob him in cold blood. He then takes on two runaway servants, Johannes (Morten Hee Andersen) and his wife Ann Barbara (Amanda Collin), but only if they work for no pay. Kahlen may not want to care but he soon also takes in a Romani girl named Anmai Mus (Melina Hagberg) when she is abandoned by the group of brigands who have been exploiting her. Though Arcel and co-screenwriter Anders Thomas Jensen don’t give us too much insight into Kahlen’s inner life, Mikkelsen’s performance shades in those missing character holes.
The Promised Land is old fashioned in how it draws a line between good and evil. While this could very well be a man vs. nature or man vs. himself narrative, it doesn’t take long for Arcel to reveal that he has made a classic man vs. man tale. We soon learn that Johannes and Ann Barbara are fleeing from Frederik De Schinkel (Simon Bennebjerg), a nobleman who hopes to annex the heath to his own property. Like Kahlen, De Schinkel suffers from an inferiority complex (even adding the “De” to his name to sound more regal), but he is willing to go to more devilish extremes to grasp power. Aggravated that he may lose the heath to Kahlen, De Schinkel makes it his mission to sabotage every effort of his rival.
Though Bennebjerg plays De Schinkel as a villainous caricature, this sort of broad characterization fits within Arcel and Jensen’s world building. The story slowly builds into a revenge narrative set within the framework found in a Western. The story may be manipulative, but we yearn for Kahlen to succeed, especially knowing that De Schinkel’s dastardly plans could very well mean the end for the former soldier and his farmstead.
There is something refreshing in the throwback feel of The Promised Land, especially featuring an actor as committed to his craft as Mikkelsen. Arcel and Jensen also give us outlandish villains that we can easily cheer over when dispatched. Perhaps they have created a new genre in the agricultural thriller. Elevating the film is Mikkelsen, however, proving that no matter how mundane the material (though The Promised Land certainly isn’t mundane), he is willing and able to spin it into gold.
Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures
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