The Promised Land - Movie Review

In 18th century Denmark, Captain Ludvig Kahlen (Mads Mikkelsen) - a proud, ambitious, but impoverished war hero - sets out to tame a vast,
uninhabitable land on which seemingly nothing can grow. He seeks to start farming crops, build a colony in the name of the King, and gain a noble
title for himself. This beautiful but forbidding area also happens to be under the rule of the merciless Frederik De Schinkel, a preening nobleman
who realizes the threat Kahlen represents to his power. Struggling against the elements and local brigands, Kahlen is joined by a couple who have
fled the clutches of the rapacious De Schinkel. As this group of misfits begins to build a small community in this inhospitable place, De Schinkel
swears vengeance, and the confrontation between him and Kahlen promises to be as violent and intense as these two men.

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Watching the trailer for "The Promised Land" ("Bastarden"/"King's Land"), it felt like a blend of American historical dramas with a more European influenced approach, esthetic, and style, such as "The VVitch: A New England Tale" with its historical zeitgeist, costume piece flair and museal "living history" village props, backdrops and architecture on the one hand, and on the other hand a more stylized, less naturalistic, more heroical, classical Hollywood Western epic or at least an only partly demystified version thereof such as "Dances with Wolves", where the basic structure of the tale is still very much (anti-) hero and his family/friends versus main foe and his more or less villainous minions.

Parts in the latter kind of movies are what Mads Mikkelsen has been tending towards lately, and while commercially that might be a wise move, as tales of good versus evil, or at least of righteous revenge, or of violence for a rather good cause will always have a broad appeal and sell well, I cannot help but feel that artistically speaking this approach can be limiting to character portrayal, and I feel like Mikkelsen is already being typecast too narrowly for someone of his potential and talent as an actor, that he is mainly given the roles of a broody loner or a socially askew or even awkward person with issues of unresolved trauma or other causes of estrangement from his social surroundings.

I do appreciate how, generally speaking, Mads Mikkelsen goes about his craft. Hardly any other actor that I know blends what I feel is a rather reticent and subtly nuanced "European" style of movie acting so seamlessly with a "Hollywood"-oriented appeal of more extroverted and larger-than-life displays of emotion. This accomplished minimalist and yet somehow charismatic angle of approach I have seen taken by actors coming from Europe such as Armin Müller-Stahl, Michael Caine, Rutger Hauer, and Terence Stamp; but I would also add Catherine Keener, Christopher Walken, Edward Norton, and Philip Seymour Hoffman from the other side of the Atlantic to this range of actors. Overall, they are a rare breed.

Most of Mads Mikkelsen's movie roles so far have been in Danish, international European or European-American (co-) productions. Many of his roles also feature a biographical background or story related to Danish, Northern European or Scandinavic culture or origin. And quite a few of the movies he has acted in are in the borderline territory between niche genre / independent / arthouse cinema and productions with a broader, more casual, more mainstream target audience.

So, he seems like a perfect choice for a movie like this:

Playing a strong-willed soldier with Danish and Prussian background, committed and dedicated to an immense task, his oftentimes dry, matter-of-fact, naturalistically basic yet subtly nuanced acting style seems an obvious fit. I am sure he can give a performance that is subtly expressive and somewhat eccentric without appearing pigeon-holed as either too wooden or too on-the-nose.

To go by the trailer, this movie, while looking interesting enough thematically and also having a seemingly well-cast lead actor, does also look somewhat conventional, stylish but unsurprising in its esthetic and stylistic choices, camera perspectives and approach to narration and tone.

I also heard it managed to successfully apply for subsidies by the public German film fund, which in of itself is not unusual for a European production featuring German actors and a historical topic related to similar "inland colonization" also pursued in former German states around that time, but: More often than not, pitched scripts that are being granted such funding tend to be rather bland and samey.

On the other hand, it is based on a novel, and historical novel adaptations can be quite appealing for how deeply they are researched compared to the average blockbuster movie.

This film has caught my interest, but I am still somewhat sceptical.

[pawegraczyk]

Instead of saying "movie is not perfect (...)" you could talk little bit about those imperfections. It is called "reviewing" :)