Mads Mikkelsen On His International Oscar Contender ‘The Promised Land’, Saying Goodbye to ‘Indiana Jones’ And Becoming A New Grandfather
As a recent new grandfather, Mads Mikkelsen couldn’t be happier, but he doesn’t smile much in his new movie. An earthy 18th-century period piece, The Promised Land sees the Dane play a hard-up veteran, Ludvig Kahlen, who is determined to turn the blasted heaths of Jutland into a thriving farmland. It’s a Western of sorts, which becomes noticeably clearer when Kahlen starts to cross swords with a competing local landowner, but, for Mikkelsen, it’s a subversive alpha male story of the kind he does so well, from the brutal Viking fantasy Valhalla Rising to the white-cold survival drama Arctic.