Michael's Movie Grade: A+
An incredibly powerful film from Denmark.
This movie has what at first seems like a very simplistic story, a man who obtains permission to build and cultivate plants on a heath (where nothing has grown for a long time) with hopes of achieving respect and position. Yet despite this, The Promised Land is a simply captivating film that truly keeps your eyes glued to the screen for the entire length. This simply plot is taken in many directions both expected and unexpected. At various times this film can be dark, disturbing, uplifting, funny, sad, violent and suspenseful. The film moves between its various emotions extremely naturally and each emotion is felt completely. Everything in this movie feels perfectly earned with everywhere turn the story takes being perfectly built up to. It has a pace that takes it time but despite this, the film is never boring, and you will never find your attention drifting for a second. One of the major reasons for this that our main character is wonderfully complex. Despite being the film's protagonist, he is not always in the morally right. In fact, he often does things that are very morally questionable. This makes this character always feel completely real to us and therefore makes the story all the more involving. We also see him evolve as a character over the course of this film. This character arc once again feels completely earned and completely believable. All this is helped by an incredible performance by Mads Mikkelsen, whose often stoic performance makes this film all the more heartbreaking. Add to this a very intelligent script by Nikolaj Arcel (who also directed this film) Anders Thomas Jensen and Ida Jessen and you have a modern-day masterpiece.
This is simply a must see.
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