After serving in the German Army, Captain Ludvig Kahlen (Mads Mikkelsen) retires and seeks permission from the Danish Royal Court to cultivate and colonize the Jutland moorland, a barren stretch of land and an unfulfilled passion project of the King’s for some time.  If successful, he asks in return from the Court to bestow upon him a noble title, elevating him from the humble status of which he was born, and a manor to fit his new rank.  The land is hard, the weather unforgiving, and what little success Kahlen does find is just as quickly stolen away by a band of Romani travelers that also occupy the land.  All of these threats, though, pale in comparison to the rigor of which Frederik de Schinkel (Simon Bennebjerg), a nearby land baron, seeks to squash out Kahlen’s hopes of cultivation as he would rather buy the dead land at a cheap price to add to the reaches of his own estate. 

Nikolaj Arcel directs The Promised Land, a multi-national production between Denmark, Germany, and Sweden.  Anders Thomas Jensen co-wrote the script with Arcel and the film premiered in competition at the Venice International Film Festival under its original, Danish title Bastarden, ahead of its theatrical run from Magnolia Pictures in the States.  An adaptation of Ida Jessen’s novel The Captain and Ann Barbara, this historical epic runs 127 minutes and was submitted by Denmark to the Academy Awards, advancing to the shortlist but missing out on the final ballot. 

The Promised Land is a real balancing act that follows many of the same arcs found in the American Western genre, but at the same time, long swatches of the film take place at the Hald Manor meaning Kahlen must trade in his field clothes for his military uniform and that transforms the film into more of a costume genre revolving around the budding affair between him and Edel Helene (Kristine Kujath Thorp); de Schinkel’s cousin to which she is regrettably betrothed.  As often is the case, attempting to serve two masters, or in this case, audiences, often leaves neither party fully satisfied.  What ties these two worlds together, though is Rasmus Videbæk’s sweeping cinematography that brings a sense of awe and wonder even across the hostile landscapes yet is not afraid to come in close to enjoy all the details of Jette Lehmann’s production design while Dan Romer’s score helps to elevate even the smallest moments of the film to match the impressive scope of the overall picture. It might not be as grandiose as some of the epics that it is emulating, but The Promised Land, much like Kahlen, never loses sight of its high aspirations. 

With a proven affinity towards Danish history, Arcel seemed a natural fit in bringing The Promised Land to screen, but the script punches a little soft when compared to the overall story it tells.  Bennebjerg gets to deliver a deliciously evil performance as the easy-to-hate villain, but other than his role as the clear narrative antagonist, there is little else for him to do or build off of.  This pattern extends to Kahlen who is written to be almost benevolent to a fault resulting in an uncharacteristically bland performance from Mikkelsen as if Bennebjerg was allowed to absorb all of the energy from the scene.  It makes sense when the two are sharing a scene as they are so drastically different, but even when we are with Kahlen on his homestead, the passion he has for cultivation does not come across as anything particularly interesting. 

Thankfully, in the back half of the film, things begin to pick up pace and the story starts to take a little more shape. The film is not just interested in Kahlen’s potato prospects, but also in a growing romance between him and Ann Barbara (Amanda Collin), the widow of Johannes Eriksen (Morton Hee Andersen) who was tortured to death at de Schinkel’s command in a shockingly brutal scene especially given how much is left unseen.  The pair were originally serf farmers at de Schinkel’s fields but fled his mistreatment. Their desertion does not bother Kahlen who also illegally employs the Romani Travelers in the area as the crown will not provide him with laborers until the land is proven and the added benefit that the Romani will stop stealing the livestock from the homestead.  After Johannes’ death, Kahlen returns his body to the homestead and his wife. With work still needing to be done, Ann begins to lay some ground rules for Kahlen, and the tenuous relationship that forms does eventually shake the feeling of Stockholm Syndrome as they do become more and more symbiotic, even if it seems they are brought together more by tragedy than an actual attraction or affinity for each other.  

The glue of this relationship comes in the form of Anmai Mus (Melina Hagberg) and she is honestly given the most to do and the widest arc of this cast.  In her debut role, Hagberg does well as she slowly allows Anmai to warm to life with Kahlen and Ann Barbara; a far cry from baiting the man into an ambush in her introductory scene.  The Promised Land eschews a full embrace of many of the tried and true tropes that circle Anmai’s character arc – the haggard outsider who becomes an irreplaceable part of their new family – but that does not mean the story absolves itself from still flirting with these ideas.  She is the perfect acolyte, taking to farming almost immediately, tending the fields with her surrogate father, squealing in excitement when the potatoes start to bud up from the soil, and assisting with the surveying of the land to prepare the next field. Towards the end of the film, the story shifts forward a number of years and Anmai, now grown (Laura Bilgrau), is still working on the farm but rejoins the Romani travelers as they pass through to perform some repairs to the home. It is bittersweet, but it lands better than Kahlen’s rescue of Ann Barbara does, and his relinquishing of the land because, having given up his title, what has this film been leading towards? Their relationship is simply not fleshed out enough across the runtime to make it a satisfying ending and while it is only natural to want to follow Mikkelsen as Kahlen, the way that these characters are sent off shows that the more interesting avenue into this story may have been through Anmai.  

The Promised Land, as many expansion Westerns tend to be, is a dusty endeavor about one man’s ambition to rise above the crowd, the land, and himself. The problem lies in that, while we have enough information about Kahlen to understand his motivation, the script never gives Mikkelsen enough to really build a character from. It is hinting at ideas of a robust past for this character, but the story seemingly opens too late and is focused too much on the mundane so we are not given enough of a base to believe in Kahlen’s ability to do some of the things he does in the back half of the film. Despite the artistry that fills the frame and the passion that is clearly evident from behind the lens, the result is a film that feels incredibly hollow and empty. Even still, this could be seen as a purposeful choice to reflect the harsh and barren nature of the land, strangling the life out of both crop and story, but as apt as this visual metaphor may be, in execution, it hijacks the intent and subjects the audience to a film that is, truly and unfortunately, unhospitable from the first frame to its subtlety-hopeful last.