THE PROMISED LAND: The Only Great Film of 2024

THE PROMISED LAND (2024)
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 Stars

THE PROMISED LAND is the only great movie I've seen so far this year. It reminds me of 80s French cinema such as JEAN DE FLORETTE and RETURN OF MARTIN GUERRE, a rich and moving narrative backed by flawless performances and a handsome production.

No doubt some of the credit must go to the source material it is based on. Arcel's work here would have just been "another movie" in the 80s or 90s but a well-told story is a rarity these days. His frontier drama plays like an epic Western set in Denmark, employing familiar genre themes of land ownership and competing moral codes. In fact, THE PROMISED LAND is the best Western I've seen this year. Kevin Costner could learn a thing or two from this well-constructed script and it would be a perfect film school study to line this up beside the disjointed HORIZON. Instead, all the pieces fit in THE PROMISED LAND while it still manages to surprise. It moves in narrative directions that American films are too scared to go. These bold, disturbing choices depict the characters as true humans, the humans we most often are rather than the ones we want ourselves to be.

Like those French films I mentioned before, this is a movie I will be thinking about for years.

Watched on Hulu.

These reviews were also posted on my letterboxd account and will eventually be published on my Travis Mills filmmaker Facebook page