The Promised Land & The Zone of Interest (Montclair Film Festival 2023)(Review(s)

The Promised Land (Bastarden)

I have often found that anything that Mads Mikkelsen is in is usually great and if it is not, it’s not his fault. I say that realizing that I’ve never seen a Danish film of his. So this was my first Danish language film of his.

Mads is his usually commanding self, playing Ludvig Kahlen, a captain in the Danish army, whose ambition leads him to try to settle the Jutland for farming purposes. The Jutland is similar to the American Frontier as it is an open prairie and subject to harsh weather conditions. Now I said farming purposes because people have settled there. The land has just not been able to be farmed. This is important because the film’s main antagonist is one of these people. The villain is one of the weaker parts of the film. He seems like a cartoon character, a caricature of many different villainous traits combined into one person. This is one of the faults I had with the Promised Land. Another was the ending, which seemed to go against the tone of the movie. The cinematography is very good, with superb long shots of the Jutland and brilliant shots both being burned and born anew for growing plants.

The main actors are very good. Mikkelsen can always do more with an icy glare than many actors can do with language and he proves it here. More of a pleasant surprise was the performance of Amanda Collin who plays the character of Ann Barbara. I knew Mikkelsen would have a superb performance but hers came as a great shock and somewhat of a revelation. I have never seen it before but English language viewers might recognize her from HBO’s Raised by Wolves (2020). Melina Hagberg, who plays the child Anmai Mus, often adds levity to scenes that need it but can also be a reason for some of the more heartbreaking moments of the film.

I love films that show me a different country’s history, something I didn’t know a lot about and teach me about the country’s historical events. The Promised Land is no different. It is a fascinating watch though some of the historical facts are hard to grasp as a non-Dane. The performances are mostly very good and the cinematography is fantastic. It is a worthy foreign historical film that is able to win the viewer over with its performances, and cinematography.

The Zone of Interest

The Zone of Interest (2023) was a film that I was apprehensive about seeing. I originally was not going to see it but after talking to some people online and hearing about their anticipation of the film, I decided to see it. I have seen plenty of movies about Nazis and The Holocaust but this one is so much more different than anything I’ve seen. Usually these film’s show the horrors of the camps, what the occupants would look like. But The Zone of Interest is different. We, the viewer, never see the inside of the camps. We only hear the sound of machinery and the occasional scream. For someone who might not know about The Holocaust, the sound of machinery would not be necessarily a bad thing, but the audience knows what it means.

The film shows us normal events with those noises in the background. The sound design of the film is excellent. The horror of the film comes from the characters and the sound design. The horrors of The Holocaust always seem out of the family’s view, like a dark, ominous cloud in the distance. There are a few moments outside of the Commandant’s house toward the end of the film but most of it takes place in the home and yard. The best way to describe some of these moments are Nazi home videos. The father swims with his kids, canoes with them and they celebrate his birthday like a normal family with cake and candles. In these ways, it is truly terrifying, how normal everything feels. It’s a horror film but doesn’t often play like one. There are no jump scares or scary monsters, just a constant dread and terrifying realism to scare the audience.

There are a few issues with the film, one is immediate. The film opens with an overture, which lasts for a few minutes but feels entirely unnecessary. Other than that, there are not any other glaring issues with the film. Christian Friedel and Sandra Hüller, as the Commandant Rudolf Höss and his wife Sanda respectively, dominate any scenes they are in. After the film, there was a Q&A with Friedel who talked about the production and how he was able to play such a complex man effectively. It is a remarkable film that showcases the naturalism of evil in humans. It is an unfortunate trait that comes so easily to us.

Ben’s Archive – The Promised Land & The Zone of Interest