'We don't understand things like that in Danish film making.' 'It's like, even though the film is gruesome and complex, they keep calling it bad guys/good guys, right? In Nikolaj Arcel's film, Mikkelsen plays a Danish army captain in the 18th century trying to make his fortune by cultivating the barren Jutland heath, who comes up against a ruthless landowner.īut for Mikkelsen, this villain has a backstory: an ostracised childhood, where other youths 'played with him, but they don't like him'.
'So I would rather I would rather approach characters like that.' 'So that's not a bad guy, that is a sad human being. That measured approach to his new film has not prevented Mikkelsen from playing a string of memorable villains, including the Nazi in the latest Indiana Jones film, released earlier this year.īut Ludvig Kahlen, the soldier he plays in Arcel's film, is 'a man who wants to be something that he hates', he said. The illegitimate son of a servant woman and a nobleman - the film's Danish title translates as 'bastard' - Kahlen hopes to be raised up into the nobility that abandoned him by transforming the barren land in the name of the Danish king.
