The Promised Land

The Promised Land is visually splendid and utterly absorbing, a rags-to-riches/vengeance/love story packed with action and heartbreak.

Arcel and Mikkelsen have struck a deeply human chord with The Promised Land. It is a tale of undoubted savagery but also one of hope in all its divine illumination.

This handsome Nordic demi-western, inspired by real events and adapted from Ida Jessen’s 2020 novel, The Captain and Ann Barbara, is powered along by Mikkelsen’s rugged charisma and various rustic and maggoty scene partners, including the married runaway serfs Ann Barbara (Amanda Collin, quietly expressive) and Johannes (Morten Hee Andersen), and the self-possessed Romani orphan Anmai Mus (Hagberg Melina).

The result is the kind of ravishing, rousing epic we don’t really get much of anymore.

Centuries ago, the heath lands of Denmark were rough-hewn, expansive and notoriously unforgiving. In the new Danish film “The Promised Land,” those words could also describe the face of its star, Mads Mikkelsen. One of the great visages in movies, it has a landscape all its own.

Notionally rooted in historical fact, but embellished with storybook romance and flouncing cartoon villainy, this roundly enjoyable Venice competition entry finally owes all its residual gravitas (and at least half its considerable handsomeness) to the expressive woodcut visage of one Mads Mikkelsen.

This sweeping, stagy movie sags and drags, never quite able to shake the weight of its own loftiness.

'The Promised Land' unfolds a brutal story about the dynamics of power and class struggle in 18th-century Denmark. Mads Mikkelsen delivers a great performance as a pauper ex-military man looking to climb the social hierarchy by building a settlement in a barren land in the name of his king. Director Nikolaj Arcel gives us a history class as he develops an intense story with a vulnerable and imperfect hero dominated by ambition, revenge, and his obsession with belonging to the upper class. In addition to a very well-crafted script, notable action scenes, and characters developed with various nuances, the film impresses with how it touches on themes such as the sense of community, racism, the way women fought male domination of the era, the acquired family, and what it means to face chaos: Try to dominate it or let yourself be carried away by it?

Great looking movie. See it in the theater if you can. Plenty of interesting characters that kept me invested the entire movie. The abupt violence was shocking at times, but it doesn't detract from this powerful story of good vs evil, and man vs nature.

This basically true story is set in the 1700s Denmark, when a war hero (Mads Mikkelsen) sets out to settle the country's barren heather into productive farmland. Meanwhile, the extremely cruel nobleman neighbor presents continuous obstacles. Throughout the seemingly endless setbacks, Mikkelsen creates a character with a steely stare and stubborn determination. As the villainous aristocrat, Simon Bennebjerg delights in his evil deeds almost to the point of twirling a moustache. Even though the never-ending tragedy sometimes seems over the top, Mikkelsen's portrayal adds an emotional aspect that makes the unbearable situations endurable.

Fazendo o feijão com arroz de um épico, com os percalços sendo pouco a pouco superados (no caso, vencer o espaço inóspito e torná-lo habitável, com a ajuda de outsiders), provocando a ira e inveja de poderosos, ruindo e, após, a redenção. Com interpretações a cima da média e um heroísmo que, as vezes, sacrifica o humano em prol de seu objetivo maior (mas com redenção ao final), temos o tempero perfeito de um filme clássico , sem muitas novidades narrativas.