The Promised Land: Sweeping Epic a Showcase for Mads Mikkelsen’s Talent

By Liz Braun

Rating: A+

One of the best films at TIFF 2023 was Nicolaj Arcel’s The Promised Land, a sweeping epic about one man’s ambition in 18th century Denmark. This is a costume drama with all the personal struggle and unforgiving (but spectacular) landscape of a Western.

You'll want to see this one on a big screen.

Mads Mikkelsen stars as career soldier Captain Ludwig Kahlen, a man who believes he can pull himself up by his bootstraps and has set a path for himself to a better life. The impoverished Kahlen intends to develop the Jutland area of Denmark, a stretch of heath with poor soil and dangerous inhabitants.

It’s all bad lands and bad guys, but getting the area settled is a project dear to the king’s heart, and Kahlen knows that if he succeeds the court will reward him with a royal title. That title will be the key to a different life for Kahlen and his descendants.

What unfolds as Kahlen sets out to make his fortune is a tsunami of conflict — man versus nature, man versus man, man versus himself. As he tackles the land in Jutland, a simple twist of fate brings him two helpers, a man and woman (Morten Hee Andersen and Amanda Collin) who are tenant farmers on the run. The woman, Ann Barbara, eventually becomes part of Kahlen's household.

The newcomers work the land for Kahlen in exchange for a safe place to stay. That helps a little, but survival is still touch and go until Kahlen figures out that there is one crop the land will support.

His agricultural success does not sit well with neighbouring aristocrat Frederik De Schinkel (Simon Bennebjerg). De Schinkel is the local overlord and tyrant; in his view, Kahlen’s progress only diminishes his own power.

The two go head-to-head in a pitched battle that involves cruelty and privilege on one side and perseverance and hard work on the other. Their conflict is brutal and bloody and often difficult to watch. Kahlen soon proves to be far more noble than the nobility, but the moral high ground is a lonely place.

When what he has longed for in terms of success and status are within his grasp, Kahlen must then struggle with the cost to himself and others — and face his own ambition and relentlessness.

The Promised Land is visually splendid and utterly absorbing, a rags-to-riches/vengeance/love story packed with action and heartbreak. Nearly every frame rests squarely on Mikkelsen and the gravitas he brings to this role; he is ably supported by a cast that includes Kristine Kujath Thorp, Gustav Lindh, and Melina Hagberg.

Written by Arcel and Anders Thomas Jensen, the film is based on the novel The Captain and Ann Barbara, by Ida Jessen. This is intense storytelling that illustrates the terrible divide between the haves and have-nots, not to mention the racism and ignorance of the time and the corruption at the top — making The Promised Land entirely contemporary, despite the historical setting.

The Promised Land is Denmark’s 2024 Oscar entry.

The Promised Land. Directed by Nicolaj Arcel. Written by Nicolaj Arcel and Anders Thomas Jensen. Starring Mads Mikkelsen, Amanda Collin, and Simon Bennebjerg. In theatres in Toronto and Vancouver February 9, and opening across Canada through February.