Not Coming to a Theater Near You

The Kingdom / Riget / Lars von Trier’s Riget I / Denmark/Sweden/France/Germany / 1994

I’ll begin by admitting a rare fact: I was a mild fan of Kingdom Hospital, Stephen King’s 2004 American adaptation of Lars von Trier’s miniseries. The cast was a perfectly chosen ensemble, the cinematography was curiously and eerily dark, and the opening title sequence was astounding. Not to mention the inclusion of the anteater, which continues to haunt me if for no other reason than the complete bizareness of it all. But the series never meshed, never felt complete or destined for anything original, even after King himself joined the cast and the show ended.

Von Trier’s original miniseries, on the other hand, is a masterful cinematic machine. For 4 1/2 hours we’re drawn in like a ship to a storm, watching helplessly as the staff of the Kingdom falls victim to the hospital’s past and to one another. A botched operation by the arrogant Dr. Helmer leaves a little girl brain-damaged; a doctor named Bondo uses excess hospital gowns to barter for supplies, including a drug that can be used to make cocaine; a student named Mogge, hoping to impress a nurse in the hospital sleep lab, offers her the severed head of a look-alike cadaver; a male nurse and his mother, a spiritualist who feigns illness to remain in the hospital, track down a driverless ambulance. All the while the ghost of a little girl roams an elevator shaft and two dishwashers with Down Syndrome give ominous clues as to the hospital’s mood. Brilliantly executed, with the camera tilting and roaming through long and colorless corridors, Von Trier isolates us in his concrete dreamcatcher. Topped off by what could be—and probably is—the most disturbing cliffhanger ever, The Kingdom is certainly deserving of its reputation, however inflated, as the greatest miniseries ever made. My only qualm is with the title sequence, which feels like a failed attempt to duplicate an episode of ER.

by Adam Balz | Source: October Films VHS
31 Dec 2006 1:45 PM | Submit Comment