The Kingdom Hospital rests on ancient marshlands where the bleach’g ponds once lay. Here the bleachers moistened their great spans of cloth. The steam evaporating from the wet cloths shrouded the place in permanent fog. Centuries later, the hospital was built here. The bleachers gave way to doctors and researchers, the best brains in the nation and the most perfect technology. To crown their work, they called the hospital “The Kingdom.” Now life was to be charted, and ignorance and superstition never to shake the bastions of science again. Perhaps their arrogance became too pronounced, and their persistent denial of the spiritual. For it is as if the cold and damp have returned. Tiny signs of fatigue appear in the solid, modern edifice. No living person knows it yet but the gateway to the Kingdom is opening once again.
. . . .Prologue to The Kingdom

Lars von Trier’s Gothic satire The Kingdom originated as a miniseries for Danish television. It approximates what the American television show ER would look like were it taken over by Stephen King. The Kingdom uses an ensemble approach and interwoven threads typical of such television shows as ER and Twin Peaks but mixes in comedy and horror along with the drama to create a magnificent romp. Von Trier admits to having been influenced by David Lynch, the director of Twin Peaks.

Historical Background: Lars Von Trier began his career in film making video clips and commercials, but turned to serious films with a short in 1983 called Liberation Pictures. His first feature film came the following year in the form of The Element of Crime. That was followed by Epidemic (1987), Medea (1988), and his breakout film, Zentropa (1991), which garnered a Special Jury Prize at Cannes in 1991. Zentropa was originally released in Denmark under the name Europa (which caused immediate confusion with a French film released in the same year entitled Europa, Europa). The Element of Crime, Epidemic, and Europa together comprise Von Trier’s so-called “E” trilogy, which stands effectively for both “Europe” and “loss of personality.” That trilogy was followed by the present film, The Kingdom (1994), which was also conceived as ultimately part of a trilogy. After The Kingdom, Von Trier directed Breaking the Waves (1996), The Kingdom II (1997), The Idiots (1998), Dancer in the Dark (2000), Dogville (2002), and Mandalay (2003). Breaking the Waves, The Idiots, and Dancer in the Dark (his first musical) are also grouped as something of a trilogy called the “Hearts of Gold” tryptique. Von Trier also has an ongoing film project called Dimension that he began in 1991 and figures to complete at the rate of three minutes per year for several decades!

Von Trier’s works are so varied as to resist being pigeon-holed. He is most highly regarded for his technical mastery, but less so for narrative excellence or thematic content. The Kingdom, however, has a very entertaining script, even if it lacks any powerful message. The Danish name of this film was Riget, which is short for “Rigshospitalet”, which is an actual Danish University Hospital in Copenhagen. The Kingdom is really a compilation of four episodes from a television miniseries that aired in 1994 . The episodes were grouped into two parts with two episodes each. These four episodes were envisioned as part of a series that would ultimately extent to thirteen episodes. The Kingdom II, containing the next group of episodes, was made in 1997 and is available for purchase in America though readers may have difficulty locating it (if interested, think on-line auction sites!). The final installment may or may not ever get made. Van Trier is supposedly committed to completing it but the two most central cast members, Ernst-Hugo Järegård and Kirsten Rolffes, have died in the meanwhile. Potential viewers of The Kingdom need to understand going in that even after a 4.5 hour investment, the story is left hanging a bit. I felt, however, that there was sufficient closure after the first film to leave me satisfied, although I do have part II on order. The concept of The Kingdom was used by Stephen King for his fifteen hour mini-series entitled Kingdom Hospital that ran on ABC in America and the BBC in England before being discontinued due to poor ratings. That series is also available on DVD.

The Story: The Kingdom is a huge hospital located in Copenhagan with an assortment of personnel not unlike one might encounter in such American primetime soap operas as ER, Twin Peaks, or NYPD Blue. There’s Dr. Stig Helmer (Ernst-Hugo Järegård) who is Swedish and a consulting physician (meaning that he is at the top of the pecking order). Helmer has published in the prestigious medical journal Lancet but is suspected of publishing work actually conducted by his assistants. Although he’s a top surgeon, he recently mucked up a bit of neurosurgery on a young girl, Mona (Laura Christensen), apparently due to a problem with the anesthesia, leaving the girl severely demented. He destroyed the anesthesia report by spilling coffee on it but there’s a copy of the report in the hospital archives that could spell trouble for him. Helmer hates everything Danish and, especially, the lax administration of The Kingdom. Nobody at the hospital likes the arrogant Helmer except Rigmor (Ghita Nørby) who likes him perhaps more than she should. She wants Helmer to move in with her or, at least, to whisk her away for a paradise vacation in Haiti.

Then, there’s the younger Dr. Jurgen Krogshoj (Søren Pilmark), known simply as “Hook”, who operates a black market within the hospital, redirecting equipment and supplies to where they are most needed. He is a wheeler and dealer who is not above blackmailing interns or, even, Dr. Helmer in order to keep the hospital operating smoothly. Hook is in love with a female doctor, Judith Bang Petersen (Birgitte Raaberg). She initially won’t give him the time of day, but after he locates a phase microscope that she badly needs for her research, she takes a shine to him. There’s a problem, however. Judith is about three months pregnant with the child of a man, Aage Krüger (Udo Kier), who has not been seen since she became pregnant. Worse still, the fetus growing inside of her is way oversized, being as large at three months as a normal fetus is at six months. Hook – sensitive guy that he is – doesn’t mind and promises to love the child as though it were his own.

The head of the hospital, Dr. Moesgaard (Holger Juul Hansen), is a genial fellow whose foremost ambition is to keep everybody cheerful and happy. He has instituted a touch-feely kind of sensitivity approach that he calls “Operation Morning Air,” much to Dr. Helmer’s chagrin. Moesgaard’s lanky son, Mogge (Peter Mygind), is the apple of his father’s eye and a medical student at the hospital, but an irresponsible prankster, who lusts after an attractive sleep researcher and older woman, Camilla (Solbjorg Hojfeldt). He is not beneath trying to impress her with the gift of a head severed from a cadaver that bears a resemblance to his own physiognomy, after he had threatened suicide from despair at her indifference. Later, he volunteers for experiments in Camilla’s sleep lab where he is drugged and his dreams are monitored. One repeated dream involves Mogge being nibbled on by four bald zombies while another entails passion with Camilla herself.

The doctors at The Kingdom belong to a secret Masonic-like society, vowing to help one another through thick and thin. Their loyalty gets put to the test by one of their members, the pathologist, Dr. Bondo (Baard Owe). His research specialty is hepatomas but the condition is so rare that one encounters a good specimen only about once a decade. Dr. Bondo is beside himself when the family of a man who is dying from a liver hepatoma refuses to agree to donate the man’s liver to science after his death. The dying man has, however, already signed a organ donor pledge, so Dr. Bondo wants to arrange to have the man’s failing liver transplanted into his own body for a few minutes, intending for it to be then quickly replaced with his own liver again. He will then be the “owner” of the damaged liver and can use it for his research.

Sound bizarre? We’re just getting warmed up! This film lasts nearly 4.5 hours, so there’s plenty of time to play with these various characters and plot threads. There’s a patient named Mrs. Drusse (Kirsten Rolffes) who is a malingerer and a spiritualist. She is into all things occult, runs séances for the terminal patients, and communes with the dead. Hook orders a CAT scan for Mrs. Drusses, which costs about $10,000, despite the fact that only the consultants are permitted to order such expensive procedures. Dr. Helmer gets wind of it and has Mrs. Drusses discharged and scolds Hook severely. While riding in the elevator, Mrs. Drusses hears the voice of a little girl emanating from the elevator shaft. She quite naturally reasons that it is a ghost and takes it upon herself to get readmitted in order to investigate the source of this mystery voice. Fortunately, her own rather slow-witted son, Bulder (Jens Okking), still very much a mommy’s boy at around age thirty, is an orderly at The Kingdom and is able to help her get around and pry about the hospital, chasing after ghosts. They even get outside a bit to chase after a ghostly ambulance that rushes spirits to and from the hospital.

The little girl in the elevator shaft is, in fact, a ghost. It is the ghost of Mary Jensen (Annevig Schelde Ebbe), a hump-back child who was murdered in the hospital in 1919 by her father, Aage Krüger. Now, in case you’ve lost track, Aage Krüger was also the father of Judith’s yet-to-be born baby, meaning that Judith was impregnated by a ghost and her baby will be a ghost. That explains why Hook is sometimes able to see right through Judith’s transparent body but not at other times. It’s the baby kicking up. It seems that many years ago, Aage fathered Mary out of wedlock. The mother had advised him that she would tell Mary the identity of her father on her seventh birthday. In order to prevent his legitimate family from getting wind of the shameful secret, Aage had misled Mary’s mother into believing that Mary had tuberculosis and had then killed Mary in the hospital with chlorine administration under the pretext of treating the tuberculosis. To add insult to injury, Mary’s small body now resides in a preservation flask in Dr. Bondo’s pathology laboratory!

Dr. Helmer flies off to Haiti in order to obtain a secret poison that will turn his nemesis, Hook, into a zombie. Rigmor, who is irate that he failed to take her along, practices shooting lab rats with a revolver, preparing for the return of her human “rat.” Meanwhile, Dr. Moesgaard has gained some notoriety for his Operation Morning Air initiative and the Health Minister and some other big shots want a tour of the facility to size things up for themselves. They arrive just in time to encounter Mrs. Drusses, Bulder, and Hook conducting an exorcism in the basement, with a ping pong paddle, crocket mallet, and tennis racket, aimed at helping poor little Mary find eternal rest. On the next floor, they come across Dr. Bondo in the neurosurgery operating theater protesting the transplant of a healthy liver for the diseased one he had earlier receiving because he wants the hepatoma to grow to be the largest one ever so that he can gain fame in his research field. Climbing another flight, the inspection team comes across Hook and a female intern trying desperately to abort Judith’s ghostly fetus which is now nearly as large as a boy of five. Finally, they get to the sleep lab where Camilla is straddling Mogge in the act of sex, having become so worked up by his earlier wet-dream as to be unable to contain herself. Flashing back to Haiti, we see Helmer stabbing a voodoo doll with pins while cursing Moesgaard. Apparently, it’s having its effect.

Themes: This film is really intended primarily as pure entertainment and any thematic content is simply incidental. There are some implicit slaps at the bureaucracy of hospital administration, the fraternity of physicians and their protection of one another, and the smug superiority of science and technology in relation to religion and spirituality. Van Trier gets in a little indirect Swede-bashing as well through the Dane-bashing of his Swedish character, Helmer.

Production Values: This is a cleverly-written, fast-paced film that holds viewer interest even with its expansive 271 minute length. There are so many interweaving subplots, bizarre characters, and strange twists that it never gets dull. It lacks the predictability of so many so-called thrillers of the horror film genre. There are some unpleasantly grisly moments during some of the surgical procedures as well as the “birth” of the ghost fetus near the end.

One marvelously creative tactic of this film is the use of a pair of adolescent dishwashers suffering from Down’s Syndrome as a kind of Greek chorus – sometimes foreseeing the events of each day and always commenting on them. It’s the old idea that the mentally ill are closer to the spirit world than the rest of us, but it’s especially apropos for a ghost film in a hospital setting.

The cinematography provides an appropriately spooky atmosphere, though partly by accident rather than intent. The entire film has something of a sepia tint to it that was caused by over-exposure of the 16 mm film stock. Then it also has some graininess resulting from the 16 mm print being later blown up to 35 mm. Most of it is shot with handheld cameras, allowing interesting shot angles. The editing is very quick.

The acting is excellent throughout, roughly on a par with the best of what you see in ensemble primetime soaps like ER, Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law, or whatever your personal favorite might happen to be. Ernst-Hugo Järegård is utterly adorable as the fuddy-duddy Dr. Helmer. Kirsten Rolffes struck the perfect balance between lunacy and logic as Mrs. Drusse. I also very much enjoyed Holger Juul Hansen as Moesgaard, Søren Pilmark as Hook, Ghita Nørby as Rigmor, and Baard Owe as Dr. Bondo.

Bottom-Line: So, what we have here is a fascinating, if imperfect, mix of humor, mystery, tragedy, drama, and romance. A ghost story in a hospital setting is something of a novelty. Although there’s nothing profound accomplished in this film, it is precisely the kind of emphatically weird and delightfully nonsensical fare that is bound to take on cult status. The Kingdom is unrated but would warrant an R rating, I would think, based primarily on hospital gore. The sexuality and on-screen violence are minimal. I recommend this film for its sheer entertainment value. If you love both horror films and the television series ER, you’ll absolutely love this film. The Kingdom is in Danish with English subtitles. The running time is about 271 minutes. If you rent this film, rent it for at least two nights. You’re probably better off purchasing it so that you can stretch it out anyway you choose and watch it repeatedly.


*************************************************************************************************
You might want to check out these other excellent films from Denmark:

Babette's Feast
Celebration
Dancer in the Dark
Day of Wrath
Gertrud
The Kingdom II
Passion of Joan of Arc
Pelle The Conqueror
Vampyr

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age