THE KINGDOM Movie Review

Riget

There are some mighty strange things happening at the mammoth Copenhagen hospital known as “The Kingdom.” Spirits seem to be roaming the corridors, while sexual shenanigans, bizarre ritualistic ceremonies, and administrators' meetings that threaten to erupt in violence at any moment are all in a days' work. From Denmark's Lars von Trier, director of Breaking the Waves, comes this soap opera to end all soap operas, originally made for Danish television but released theatrically in the U.S. The Kingdom has been compared to Twin Peaks, but that's unfair to von Trier's film, which has the dangerously demented, absurdly comic bursts of pent-up rage that David Lynch was looking for but never got hold of. The Kingdom doesn't rip you off on a narrative level, either; each of its plot threads is followed through, and all is explained, to a point. With some of these characters, like the psychotic, fiercely chauvinistic, Denmark-hating Swedish consultant, you become almost obsessively involved in watching their blossoming insanity. You want to see him get his, and he does—better than you imagined. The Kingdom's first part is four-and-a-half hours long—consisting of four episodes—and the whole thing ends with a “to be continued” title at a crucial moment. Von Trier has now completed the next four episodes—another four-and-a-half hours—and it's been released in the U.S. as The Kingdom, Part II. But be prepared—it too is “to be continued,” and based on where the story leaves off at the end of Part II, the third segment will be something to see. (The Kingdom's strange, brownish visual quality was achieved by doing a lot of juggling in the lab between video and film. Throw in von Trier's constant, gently rocking camera movements, and you just might—literally—feel at sea.)

NEXT STOP … Zentropa, Berlin Alexanderplatz, The Hospital

1995 279m/C DK Kirsten Rolffes, Ghita Norby, Udo Kier, Ernst Hugo Jarogard, Soren Pilmark, Holger Juul Hansen, Baard Owe, Birgitte Raabjerg, Peter Mygind; D: Lars von Trier; W: Lars von Trier, Tomas Gislason; C: Eric Kress; M: Joachim Holbek. VHS HMK