Wealth and Power in The Promised Land

It’s not hard to think of things that shock us with their age and wealth: Versailles, Buckingham Palace, or the Taj Mahal. We are used to thinking of these places with a sense of awe, wondering to ourselves what it was like to be someone powerful enough to build or live in one of these places. The Promised Land, a historical drama, evokes this same feeling of wealth and power these historical monuments often inspire within us. However, unlike most movies or shows set in the past, the film does not focus on depicting any particularly famous site. Instead, The Promised Land draws its audiences into a setting that captures the dynamics of wealth and power rather than simply indulging in an idolization of historical monuments. In essence, the film keeps us engaged with history by avoiding moments that make us feel like tourists. 

The movie begins with our protagonist visiting the Royal Danish Court; however, there is no sweeping or indulgent shot that helps to establish its historical context: the point in history where the Dutch had amassed huge amounts of wealth through their trading efforts and colonial empire. We, the spectators, are not meant to expand our focus to anything beyond a close view of the humble and retired war veteran, Ludvig Kahlen, as he attempts to convince a group of bureaucrats to give him the rights to what is considered worthless land. Things feel almost mundane as Kahlen moves to the moor, erecting a cottage and beginning the process of clearing the land for crops. The film makes no attempt to create a sense of historic alterity. Kahlen’s character and particular struggle is tangible and easy to feel close to. Throughout the rest of the film and as conflict arises with a rich local magistrate named de Schinkel, this kind of mundanity stays even as Khalen does confront a character that holds a significant amount of alterity from a modern perspective.

Disparities between Schinkel and Kahlen are important, but they are not primarily visible in the contrast between Schinkels palace-like residence and Kahlen’s humble house on the moor. Instead, it comes from the struggles the two men face.  While a major theme in the film is the conflict between Schinkel and Kahlen, both men have their own independent struggles. For Kahlen it is his struggle with mother nature. Indeed, much of the screen time is devoted to Kahlen’s fight with the moor, a dreary and inhospitable place that is only able to produce a small crop of potatoes through immense efforts. From an early scene where the aged man spends days in the rain trying to find suitable soil to the time when he must rush out in the middle of the night to keep his potatoes from succumbing to frost, we, the audience, feel viscerally the hardship of having to eke out a living from the land. The spoiled magistrate Schinkel, on the other hand, struggles only against his own childish and immature nature in attempts to prove to his betrothed that he is actually the kind of powerful man that his wealth indicates. 

It is in this aspect of contrast that the mundanity of the film allows us to understand history in a different way. Rather than viewing Schinkel and his wealth, we begin to feel it. The more you put yourself in Kahlen’s shoes, the better you are able to imagine the oppressiveness of a system where all the cards are stacked in favor of a very few, seemingly undeserving people, while you have to struggle at every turn. 

These are the contrasts most visible in The Promised Land—Schinkel who grossly abuses his wealth and station in efforts to satisfy his own ego versus the embattled Kahlen fighting a two front war against Schinkel and the moor. This kind of conflict is often missed in a tourist’s understanding of history. Yes, the expansive displays of wealth and power that managed to survive into the present day are awe inspiring and it is important to understand and become exposed to them, but history that focuses on only highlighting the grandeur of those places tends to miss the abuse and violence that the wealth and power they represent incited. The Promised Land does well to not let that dynamic get lost in the space between the events of the past and the memorized lines of a tour guide.