The Bastard, with Mads Mikkelsen, is a western, but Nordic and violent

Mads Mikkelsenthe actor who in Hollywood usually plays the bad guy, as in the Indiana Jones or James Bond sagas (Royal Casino), and was replaced by Grindelwald Johnny Depp in the of fantastic animals, once told us that if he receives proposals from his home country, Denmark, he usually doesn’t hesitate to accept them. WELL, The bastard it’s one of them.

The film, a historical drama, reunites him with Danish director Nikolaj Arcel, under whose direction he starred The unfaithful queen (2012), and this is not the only point of agreement. Both films are strong and moving, but The bastard It is also crossed by issues such as racism, sexual abuse and labor exploitation.

Mikkelsen plays the illegitimate son of a nobleman and a maid. He is Ludvig Kahlen, a character who existed in real life and who has moved beyond his humble roots. AS? In the Danish army he reached the rank of captain and in the middle of the 18th century he was even decorated.

Ludvig is above all a determined man, but also extremely proud. A boy with enormous ambition who puts forward a proposal to cultivate the barren wasteland of Jutland and start a settlement there, a potentially profitable project desired by the king.

In other words: he is a former captain who in 1755 is determined to grow potatoes in the king’s lands, but in a place where aridity is everything.

The proposal is evidently unattractive, a lost cause, but Ludvig offers to finance the venture with his soldier’s pension, asking in exchange for a noble title and a property with easements. Since the bureaucrats see no chance of success, they accept, thinking they can please the king without spending anything.

With his horse, a tent and a rifle (to protect himself from the bandits who infest the place) and some tools to cultivate the hard land, he resists the elements. The saying Persevere and you will succeed It seems written for him, as he finds soil to mix with clay to grow potatoes, a crop he imported from Germany.

But an enemy appears, the landowner Frederick De Schinkel (Simon Bennebjerg), a judge who treats his male servants like animals and rapes the maids, uses Copenhagen’s remoteness to ignore the monarchy and claim the territory as his own. A young shepherd (Anton Eklund) brings him a fugitive couple, Johannes (Morten Hee Andersen) and Ann Barbara (Amanda Collin), who have escaped De Schinkel’s clutches, and he also agrees to employ the outlaws living in the forest, including a la young Roma orphan, Anmai Mus (Melina Hagberg), who the superstitious Danish farmers believe brings bad luck.

Yes, it’s a western

The screenplay, which adapts Ida Jessen’s 2020 historical novel, The Captain and Ann Barbarait is incisive, and just as it deals with men, it also traces the relationship between Ludvig and Ann, who from master and servant become something else.

The bastard It’s like a western, but Nordic, with villains capable of committing unlimited evil and a taciturn man who Mikkelsen, the actor Another roundhe almost always composes with sobriety.

“The Bastard”

Drama/Action. Denmark, 2023. Original title: “Bastard”. 127′, SAM 16. From: Nikolai Arcel. With: Mads Mikkelsen, Gustav Lindh, Amanda Collin. Rooms: Hoyts Abasto and Unicenter, Cinemark Palermo, Cinépolis Recoleta, Showcase Belgrano and Norcenter.