The Promised Land, the new film from Danish director Nikolaj Arcel, is a story of ambition.
Set in 1755 it follows Captain Ludvig Kahlen, a bankrupt former soldier determined to secure the royal title denied him by birth — the film’s Danish title, Bastarden, is a reference to Kahlen’s origins as the illegitimate son of a rich landowner and his housemaid — by building a colony for the Danish king in the hinterlands of the Danish heath, at the time a lawless and untamed wilderness. In addition to the unforgiving climate and hardscrabble, crop-resistance soil, Kahlen has to battle with Frederik de Schinkel, a brutal and arrogant land baron determined to claim Kahlen’s land for his own.
The premise has the makings of a classic Western: The story of one man taming the frontier. But Arcel, who co-wrote the film with his frequent collaborator Anders Thomas Jensen (Riders of Justice), takes The Promised Land in a very different direction, turning the character of Captain Kahlen, played by Mads Mikkelsen (re-teaming with Arcel after the 2012 Oscar-nominated A Royal Affair) into a more fragile figure, a man who begins to question the purpose and value of his single-minded drive. Based on Ida Jessen’s Danish bestseller The Captain and Ann Barbara, itself inspired by real events (there was a Ludvig Kahlen, and a Frederik de Schinkel), The Promised Land will have its world premiere in competition at the 80th Venice Film Festival.
Arcel spoke to The Hollywood Reporter ahead of the film’s premiere about his own ambitions — The Promised Land is the director’s first Danish language film since his Hollywood debut The Dark Tower — the joy of writing for an evil “truth teller” and why “everything in your life becomes easier when you have Mads [Mikkelsen] involved.”
This is your first Danish film since A Royal Affair. What was it about this project that made you want to sort of come back after your experience in Hollywood with The Dark Tower?
Well, That’s a big question. Listen. It’s as simple as this. I read the book [ Ida Jessen’s The Captain and Ann Barbara] and I really fell in love with it. I just thought: oh my god, isn’t this a great story! It has amazing characters, very vibrant, specific characters that I love. But there was also something about it that was very personal to me and to my co-writer Thomas [Anders Thomas Jensen] in terms of where we are in our lives and where the main character, Captain Ludvig Kahlen, is in his life. The idea of living a life with an awful lot of ambition, and possibly at times not really seeing what’s around you. We both arrived at different stages in our lives. I had my first child three years ago, and now my second son has arrived. I’m at this stage in life where I’m wondering whether I spent too much time working or trying to attain a certain goal in terms of career and work and, and suddenly I find out: Oh, there’s a whole different life out there, the life of being a father, of having a family, and all those other things. So, in that sense, this story was perfect timing for me because [Mads Mikkelsen’s] character, his arc, his journey, I could really relate to that. That was probably what made me want to do it.
And then of course, it was a different kind of challenge to get it done. Because, as you can see, it’s quite a big movie and it’s difficult to finance these kinds of films in Denmark. But I do think the fortunate thing for us was that Mads on board even before we finished the script, and as soon as he gets involved, it got a little easier. Everything in your life gets a lot easier when you have Mads involved.
It’s a big budget for a European film, around $9 million, but still nothing near an American budget.What were the big differences in working on this project, as opposed to your last project, the Hollywood production The Dark Tower?
There’s a vast difference. The biggest difference is, well, my studio system experience was left me a little bit scarred. I’ll tell you directly: It wasn’t that much fun. I think most people on that film really wanted to make something great. The problem was that every single person on that project wanted to make something different. There was this constant clash over what kind of film it was supposed to be. And I’m not used to that. I’d never experienced that before. Because in Denmark, for better or worse, it’s your movie. You come in you say I want to do this and then nobody really interferes until you’re done and it’s over. And then if you fail, it’s on your terms. And if you succeed, it’s on your terms. It’s very different. The U.S. is more…corporate is probably the right word. A lot more people with a lot more voices and I felt I kind of drowned a little bit in that. It wasn’t a pleasurable experience for me. Working in that particular system. I felt like: What am I even doing here? If my voice is just one out of 80 different people who have the same say that I have, what am I doing here as a director?
So there was a vast difference to make this film, coming was back home, working with my friends, my old collaborators, with Mads again, having control of a movie again. On so many levels, it’s been a very different experience. One of the reasons for that, I think, is when you make a Danish film, nobody expects it to be this huge blockbuster, so there’s not so much fear involved. We don’t have to “win the year” with this film or anything. Which means allowing a lot more leeway to do the things we want to do.
How did you manage to make the film look so big on such a tight budget?
I think the biggest way to circumvent the budget problem is to really plan well. We knew every single shot of every single scene. Even with this detailed planning, we still had some crazy, crazy days. I’ve never worked as hard on the film and nor has my crew. It was harsh and tough to work because we never got any sleep, but we kept working because it was so pleasurable, and because we had so much fun. I also think doing a film in Denmark you get a little bit more for your money because the overhead is lower. In America, I couldn’t really figure out where the money was going, like where did that million dollars go? Here it really goes up on the screen because you don’t have a huge crew, and, of course, we get paid less, which also helps put the budget on the screen.
This film is based on a novel, but the story is inspired by a real person, Captain Ludvig Kahlen, and his real attempts to tame the Danish heath. How close did you feel bound to the actual history in making the movie?
Very little is known about Ludvig Kahlen after he goes off to the heath, so there is very little information about him in the period of our film. On A Royal Affair, I was very adamant about staying as true as possible to the real, recorded events. But in this case, I was adapting a work of fiction based on true events. So I was loyal to the book first and to Ida Jessen’s vision. And some of the characters in the book she made up completely. Ludvig is real. Frederik de Schinkel is real. And he really was this kind of a crazy maniac. Those things are documented. But there are characters that are completely fictional and we wanted those characters to be in the film so we made the decision not to make a true history because that wouldn’t be true to all those beautiful characters and ideas in the book.
I find Mads Mikkelsen’s performance really interesting. It reminds me a bit of his role in Riders of Justice, which you co-wrote, right?
I didn’t co-write it but it was my co-idea, so to speak.
In a lot of his Danish roles, Mads plays a quite vulnerable character — like in The Hunt or Another Round — and in his Hollywood roles, from Casino Royale to Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, he tends to be a ruthless, hard man. It’s rare to see him combine the two. But he does in Riders of Justice, where he starts out as this brutal soldier and ends up quite vulnerable by the end. Much like he does in this film.
That’s right and it was a very challenging thing for me to write. My hope was to create more complex figures than Mads role in A Royal Affair, where his character basically wants to save the world. Mads really helped me with this. Mads is a brave actor. And every time he and Thomas and I sat down in a room together, it was Mads, especially, who was very adamant that we create a character that was very real in terms of his own psychology. We thought at the beginning we should show him to be a bit more caring. But Mads said: No, he has to be tough, unfeeling. He really helped me shape the character in the script.
You are right, it is like in Riders of Justice, where in the beginning, in the first half of the movie, you think: What an asshole. And only slowly do you come to understand who he is and why he does what he does. It’s the same here. Ludvig, it’s almost like a man who hasn’t had emotions his entire life. And on the heath, in this promised land, he slowly learns what emotion is, and what there is to life besides ambition and drive.
Was there a real Ann Barbara?
No, she’s Ida’s invention for the novel.
Because I find her a fascinating character, especially in the context of the film. You are seeing it a lot in history films nowadays that filmmakers are finding ways to forefront female characters, to focus on people who were forgotten in the background of history.
Ann Barbara means everything to me and to the film. She’s extremely important. I have to be watchful of spoilers, but one of the things that attracted me to the story was that, in a weird sense, when she first enters the story, she’s almost invisible. You don’t really notice her. It’s like that in our film, and it was that way in the novel. She kind of slowly creeps up on you, and slowly you realize she’s much more than just “the help.” And then, no spoilers, but her ending in the film is massive.
I spoke to the actress, Amanda [Collin] a lot about this. About how we could make her sort of slightly invisible in the beginning and then have her slowly come in and almost take over the whole film. I think we succeeded, at least partly, because a lot of people who watch it, halfway through they go: ‘Oh, I didn’t know it was going to got that way.’ But, for us, it wasn’t so much about let’s put in a strong female character to make the story more modern because she’s just like that in the novel.
She’s incredible and so is Simon Bennebjerg, who plays de Schinkel. It was great to see a proper evil character on screen again. And he seems to be having a great time with the role.
I think Simon was very comfortable in that role. I think it’s interesting that you say that he’s pure evil. We didn’t necessarily write him that way. I mean, here we have a young landowner’s son who’s just inherited the big estate and has a lot to prove. He’s not necessarily the most popular guy among his peers and he’s conflicted and has this huge lack of self-esteem. So he sort of overcompensates all the time. But he does a lot of evil things and Simon had a lot of fun in the part. For us as writers, he was great as our truth-telling character. If [Anders Thomas Jensen] or I had something brutally true we wanted to say, we could always put it in the mouth of this bad guy. Because basically, he says a lot of things that are true. The truths our protagonist hasn’t quite gotten to the point of accepting, or understanding what life is really about. But, in a weird sense, the bad guy already knows. So it was fun to write for him.
You mentioned some of the personal reasons for taking on this project and the parallels between you and the main character — who starts off very self-centered and very ambitious and then realizes along the way he’s on the wrong path. Did you land at a different place personally, in terms of how you view your own ambition?
I did, yeah. But I think it was already happening while I was making it. Because, as every parent knows, as soon as you have a child, your whole outlook changes, your whole life changes. I just had my first one, as I was about to start writing this film. So the big difference between making this film and every other film I’ve done is that this time, I was actually really longing to get back home. Which was a different thing for me. I was like: I miss my son, I want to be back home.
Now I’m more wary of taking on something that might require me to travel overseas, go away from the family. I don’t want to travel too far or travel for too long. No matter what I do in the near future, or the distant future, I want to be close to my family. I wasn’t thinking about that 10 years ago. Then I thought: I’m my own man, I can do whatever I want. It’s not that I’m less ambitious than I was but the frame in which I can make the stuff I want to make has changed. Now I have this frame of the family, of home, and anything I want to do has to fit into that frame.
What can you tell about your ambitions for your next film, what are you working on?
I’m writing something new with Thomas, but I can’t tell you about it, other than it will be another Danish film.
Another big one?
Yeah, another big one. I’m not lowering my ambition in that regard.
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