The Kingdom I & II

Introduction

Hospitals can be big scary places at the best of time. Most people don't particularly want to visit these places with their over powering association with death as well as healing, unless you work there or have loved ones you are visiting. Hospitals are full of endless corridors at the best of times, linking various wards and departments, sometimes filled with caring people who want nothing more than to help, others with people who believe they are akin to God himself. A hospital can seem like a bustling hive of activity during the day, but what about at night? What seemed to be a rather bland if bright place can suddenly become very dark and foreboding. And the less said about the huge cellars, the better.

Danish director Lars Von Trier had a brilliant idea to come up with a dark comedic ghost story set in a hospital. And not just any old hospital, no. This would be set in Copenhagen's most famous hospital, Riget - or loosely translated to The Kingdom. A boon for Von Trier was that quite early on in his research he discovered that Riget was built on what used to be bleaching fields. This was an old textiling technique whereby fabric was cleaned with soda ash in huge fields and then spread out and left to dry in the sun. Using this as the underlying basis of his story, he thereby contrasted the old ways with the latest scientific techniques and watched them clash.

Riget, or The Kingdom, first aired as a four episode series in 1994 and this was followed with a further four episodes in 1997. More were planned but sadly the deaths of a few cast members made this rather redundant.

The Kingdom I

Sigrid Drusse (Kirsten Rolffes) is a spiritualist who keeps pretending to be ill in order to gain entry to the hospital so that she can investigate strange goings on and help other patients. In an elevator with her son, dim hospital porter Bulder (Jens Okking), Drusse hears the sound of a young girl crying and thinks it is a ghost.

Drusse is the nemesis of Swedish neurosurgeon Stig Helmer (Ernst-Hugo Jaregard) who thnks he is God but also trying desperately to cover up his negligence that left a young girl called Mona in a persistent vegetative state and also hates Denmark, cursing "Danish Scum" at the end of each episode.

Hook (Soren Pilsmark) is the junior doctor who is allowed to live in the hospital basement in recognition of his uncanny ability to deal in and redirect hospital equipment, whilst also trying to get one up on Helmer in the arguement over just who can authorise a CT scan.

Judith (Birgitte Raaburg) is the object of Hook's affections, but is pregnant by someone else and complications within the pregnancy lead Hook to believe that she is pregnant with a ghost.

Meanwhile two dishwashers with Down's Syndrome discuss the goings on within the hospital in some detail and with some authority.

The Kingdom II

Judith has given birth to a monster child (Udo Kier) who grows at an exponential rate.

Hook turns against Judith and is not his normal cheery self, but this may have to do with some voodoo poison given to him by Helmer in order to stop the exposure of a report held by Hook into the Mona case.

Helmer not only attempts to turn Hook into a zombie but then falls into a state of endless panic as he thinks he may have killed Hook and Mona shows signs of communicating through her alphabet blocks.

Sigrid Drusse has resolved the issue with Mary, the girl ghost, but far greater dangers are now loose within the hospital including devil worshippers.

Dept administrator Moesgaard seeks counselling for his short comings and rediscovers an old interest in erotica.

Cancer specialist Bondo tries endlessly to persuade a dying patients family to provide him with the large cancerous tumour that may just put his research on the map, they are reluctant but Bondo will do whatever is necessary to possess it.

Picture

The picture is almost completely sepia in tone and very grainy. You may think at first, as I did, that this is just a badly stored set of tapes but the picture quality is actually deliberate with Von Trier and his crew trying their utmost to ruin the picture and therefore set the correct tone for the series.

Extras

Newspaper adverts directed by Lars Von Trier - this is a series of adverts for Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet. The first one will be familiar to viewers of Clive James and includes adjoining male and female sauna's, a rather stern looking female attendant and a strategically placed copy of said newspaper. The rest are quite entertaining rants by Swedish actor Ernst-Hugo Jaregard.

Scene commentary by director/writer Lars Von Trier, writer Niels Vorsel and editor Molly Stensgard.

Tranceformer: A Portrait of Lars Von Trier - a 48 minute documentary

In Lars Von Trier's Kingdom - a 40 minute featurette

Overall

It has to be said that The Kingdom is a fantastic piece of dark comedy that is also part spooky ghost story. Not many people could pull both off without wandering directly into spoof territory and having a completely comedic tone, rather than everything being played straight.  Stephen King was suitably impressed with The Kingdom that he put his name to a remake for US TV called Kingdom Hospital. I also believe it may have been part inspiration for Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, a rather fabulous Channel 4 comedy show that also appears to be every bit a cult classic as The Kingdom.

There is so much to love in Von Trier's creation that it would be impossible to list them all in detail, but setting this entire story in the neurosurgical ward of a modern hospital was an act of genius. So many weird things happen but are just treated as completely normal by all those around the ensuing chaos. The characterisation is superb with patient Drusse and neurosurgeon Helmer as the most detailed and also the most bizarre. The use of the Down's Syndrome actors as unofficial narrators is a superb touch, although I wasn't too enamoured about a couple of things said about them in the scene commentaries but maybe something was lost in translation. Then there's the use of Von Trier himself talking to the audience over the end credits, and with his own catchphrase. What I like most though is that there is just so much going on and despite the pacing appearing to be quite slow, the end of each episode just comes too quickly.

Collecting both parts of Riget together is a real treat for those who haven't seen this yet and is only tempered by the knowledge that more could and should have been forthcoming but for the unfortunate deaths of key members of the cast. It's thought that upon learning of Stephen King's intention to make a longer version in the US that Von Trier sent script suggestions for Riget III to him for possible inclusion but it's unknown whether any of those ideas ever made it into the US series. Regardless of the fact that it's essentially unfinished with more unanswered questions than answered (and they did answer a few of them), this is a superb series that is desperately funny at the same time as being a little unnerving and spooky. Oh, and it has a stonking theme tune full of 80's big drums and synthesisers despite been made in the 90's...

Recommended.