From its opening vision of the green life of turn-of-the-century Polish nobility, one has the sense that The Promised Land is truly an “escape novel on film” . . . until it slowly emerges that Wajda is about to unfold one of the most searing political attacks on the wages of greed ever filmed. Centering on three young men-of Polish noble, German immigrant, and Jewish descent-and following closely the progress of their plan to become capitalist mill owners, The Promised Land, based on a controversial turn-of-the-century novel, details aspects of the industrial revolution in Lodz that turned that town into a gruesome carnival of speculation for the rich, and a new kind of hell-on-earth for the poor. Wajda keeps a literary distance that frees his interpretation of sentimentality; he dangles his amoral trio at the end of the lens like absurd toys, granting as little compassion to them as they themselves show for those lives blithely manipulated to feed a monstrous desire.