by Lisa Nystrom
Worth: $18.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Mads Mikkelsen, Amanda Collin, Simon Bennebjerg, Melina Hagberg
Intro:
… knows exactly when to let the shot linger in the moment to best capture the micro-expressions of Mikkelsen’s famously expressive features.
A tale that emulates the classic Western formula through a Nordic lens, The Promised Land follows former soldier turned settler Captain Ludvig von Kahlen (Mads Mikkelsen) as he attempts to cultivate the untameable Jutland heaths.
Entering into a seemingly impossible bargain with the King’s council, Kahlen offers his agricultural services in exchange for a title and his own estate, should he achieve the task of turning the heathland’s inhospitable soil into a place fit for settlement. Mocked by the nobility, harassed by raiders, and mercilessly targeted by the power-hungry county judge, Kahlen must overcome not only the treachery of human corruption but the wilds of nature itself, if he is to survive long enough to make his mark.
While Ludvig von Kahlen was in fact a real-life Danish Captain turned surveyor, it’s Ida Jessen’s novel Kaptajnen og Ann Barbara from which the film finds its true inspiration. Director Nikolaj Arcel handles the transition from page to screen superbly, translating Jessen’s ode to longing and loneliness with a picturesque desolation. The cast are equally up to the task, the nuance and vulnerability of their performances made all the more powerful by the occasional sparseness in dialogue. Having worked with leading man Mikkelsen before in 2012’s A Royal Affair, Arcel knows exactly when to let the shot linger in the moment to best capture the micro-expressions of Mikkelsen’s famously expressive features.
While the story does not necessarily need an antagonist, what with the harsh landscape and unpredictable weather proving foe enough, traditional Western convention dictates that our hero must face off against a sufficiently sadistic villain in order to drive the narrative, a role in which Simon Bennebjerg as Frederik de Schinkel more than delivers. While nothing of measurable value seems able to grow on the heaths, corrupt and murderous landowner de Schinkel has somehow managed to flourish. Bennebjerg’s chaotic turn as the narcissistic judge foiling Kahlen’s every move is unsettling in all the right ways, his presence transforming the expansive Jutland landscape into a claustrophobic hell of his own design.
There’s a sense of ever-rumbling tension, like the threat of a storm on the horizon building throughout the film, and yet it seems that the remnants of Kahlen’s military career will only spill over into his new life as a farmer through loyalty and forbearance, rather than being quick to take arms or resort to violence. That same stoic sense of patience sets the pace for how the story unfolds, but it’s not all isolation and anguish. The understatedly sweet developing relationship between the buttoned-up Kahlen and his pragmatic housekeeper Ann Barbara (Amanda Collin), along with the delightfully uncouth Anmai Mus (Melina Hagberg), a displaced Romani girl with no kin of her own, accompanied by an evocative score by award-winning composer Dan Romer, all lend heart to this austere tale of determination, and what once might have been one man’s struggle to simply build a place to live, instead becomes his journey towards something he can truly call home.
