 | MOVIE #1,133 •🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿• 08.31.23 There are so many inexplicable twists and turns and forced cliffhangers in the last fifteen minutes of what remains the series finale, the eighth and final episode of The Kingdom, that you might forget how smooth and cohesive the otherwise bonkers story came together in totality. Clocking in at nearly ten hours, Lars von Trier’s “Twin Peaks in a hospital,” shot and released on Danish TV in the mid 90s in two 4-episode seasons (1994 & 1997), is a hard-to-find gem that deserves far more attention if not recognition for being just about the weirdest fucking thing I’ve ever seen released on a mainstream platform (if we can call Danish TV a “mainstream platform”). |
Saying one thing when you mean another is a trick, which is not unlike the whole of LVT’s filmography. On one hand, this is among his most accessible works: a procedural genre drama. And on the other, it’s a thing where Udo Kier plays the double role of Demon from Hell and a baby born with a normal adult-sized head whose body grows exponentially each day until he’s like seventeen-feet long screaming for his mother to kill him, which –SPOILERS!– she does.
I will hold off from saying more at this juncture as, apparently, there might be a third and final season on the way, à la another famously long-dormant television franchise from a luminary auteur. But this being Lars von Trier, who the hell knows.
THREE YEARS LATER...
“This being Lars von Trier, who the hell knows” was an appropriate way to end my initial review of The Kingdom for the S.O.B. went ahead and did it: he finished his small screen masterpiece and gave it an ending for the ages. Having just completed the long-awaited Season 3 here in 2023, with future von Trier projects somewhat up in the air after his recent Parkinson’s diagnosis (he says he will continue making movies for as long as he can, and I hope he does, but who knows), I can say that if that is indeed his final project, it’s certainly a worthy one to go out on.
To get this out of the way (as anyone writing about The Kingdom: Exodus is legally required to mention within the first two paragraphs): the comparisons to Twin Peaks: The Return are as unavoidable as they are perfectly and eerily apt. LVT was getting compared to Lynch well before he decided to complete his own visionary TV show 25 years later as well. But, while the initial inspiration for The Kingdom had to have been spurred by the groundbreaking Twin Peaks, his conclusion and how he went about it is vastly different. Both are phenomenal, in my opinion, but where Lynch departed from the original framework and story to the nth degree, von Trier’s return is firmly grounded in the tone and aesthetic of the original run. Outside of a very meta beginning and ending, Exodus feels like a natural continuation of the story, in the same location with the same sepia-drenched sheen. There’s no excursions to a purple ocean world or Buckhorn, South Dakota here.
Not to say he doesn’t get weird or try different things within this original landscape, because he does so IN SPADES. It’s a thrilling, hilarious and endlessly wild ride in five one-hour installments. The biggest hurdle (and main reason the final season was shelved for so long) were the deaths of several notable actors in prominent roles. He handles this with nuance and boundless creativity. It never feels like an homage because it’s so rich, fresh and new. Ernst-Hugo Järegård’s Dane-hating Helmer is replaced by his son (as Helmer Jr., comically nicknamed “Halfmer” by the Swede-roasting staff); Jens Okking as Bulder is simply exchanged for a look-alike (Nicolas Bro); and Sigrid Drusse (Kirsten Rolffes), the truth-seeking heart of the show is swapped out for a new lead, a similarly aged Karen (Bodil Jørgensen), who begins the action in the non-sepia “real world” watching the original two-season run of The Kingdom on DVD; and Udo Kier… well, please just watch it to see what they do with Udo Kier.
The meta narrative is fascinating, as everyone in Copenhagen’s Rigshospitalet is well aware of the madman Lars von Trier and his awful, fucked up TV series. LVT’s own credit-roll commentary also returns (although he speaks behind a red curtain now out of vanity, only his jittering shoes are visible), as does a new Greek chorus of male and female dishwashers: gone are the actors with Down Syndrome, replaced by a robot (who’s constantly breaking dishes) and a man with a different, and a more severe genetic disorder. As is often the case, many of these choices range from squeamish to deliriously comedic, often simultaneously, but when — MAJOR SPOILER — von Trier himself arrives in a helicopter in the role of none other than Satan, how can you not smile?
If I had known going in that some of the threads in Exodus were going to touch on culture wars stuff, I would have said, “Oh no.” But everything is handled with such ease — from #MeToo to Nazism! — and, more importantly, humor. This shouldn’t work on paper, but it does.
I watched this on the heels of the Nymphomaniac Director’s Cut and came away with a similar take: that LVT is really great at longer form storytelling. Some of his very best work is also the longest, and I don’t think that’s an accident. He’s always tried to distill BIG IDEAS into thoughtful if not nihilistic and absurdist scenarios (Willem Dafoe plays one of the devil’s minions who’s also an owl), but even when the action makes you want to scream or walk into traffic, there’s a cleverness at play which brings it full circle. The shift from the neurological to the cardiological departments (via Birgitte Raaberg’s character) is such a lovely and simple notion. The head vs. the heart. You can make a big complicated thing with boundless metaphors, but what does it matter if you don’t feel anything? The idea that this is all just a mad artist’s foolish creation seems to be the ultimate point and that is a fitting send-off for von Trier in a way, I think. It’s cheap on the one hand (it’s supposed to be), but also a perfect example/explanation of art as entertainment and/or vice versa. Exodus — yes, like The Return — is as standalone fascinating as it is successful: honoring, but more importantly elevating the original series in the most magical ways.
CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ MOVIE #1,132 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,134 ⫸
⫷ MOVIE #1,132 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,134 ⫸
Riget (English title: The Kingdom) is a Danish absurdist supernatural horror miniseries trilogy created by Lars von Trier and Tómas Gislason. Set in the neurosurgical ward of Copenhagen's Rigshospitalet (lit. 'The National Hospital', nicknamed "Riget", lit. 'the realm' or 'the kingdom'), each episode of the show takes place over a single day, and follows the hospital's eccentric staff and patients as they encounter bizarre and sometimes supernatural phenomena. The series is notable for its wry humor, its muted sepia colour scheme, and the appearance of a chorus of dishwashers with Down syndrome, who discuss in intimate detail the strange occurrences in the hospital. The main theme's song was written by von Trier himself. It was released on November 24, 1994.
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