The Kingdom I & II (1994-7)

Directors: Lars von Trier and Morten Arnfred

Screenplay: Tómas Gislason, Niels Vørsel and Lars von Trier

Cast: Ernst-Hugo Järegård as Stig Helmer; Kirsten Rolffes as Sigrid Drusse; Holger Juul Hansen as Einar Moesgaard; Søren Pilmark as Jørgen 'Hook' Krogshøj; Ghita Nørby as Rigmor Mortensen; Jens Okking as Bulder Harly Drusse; Otto Brandenburg as Hansen; Annevig Schelde Ebbe as Mary Krüger; Baard Owe as Palle Bondo; Birgitte Raaberg as Judith Petersen; Peter Mygind as Morten 'Mogge' Moesgaard; Vita Jensen as Female dishwasher; Morten Rotne Leffers as Male dishwasher; Solbjørg Højfeldt – Camilla; Udo Kier as Åge Krüger

Abstract Spectrum/A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) #32

 

It's going to be a busy night.

It is so strange that I grew up with Kingdom Hospital (2004), the Stephen King Americanised version of The Kingdom, a Danish two season mini-series co-created by Lars von Trier. If there ever was a great way to show cultural differences, comparing Kingdom Hospital to The Kingdom is the marathon to try to see this in action. As well as not being able to imagine the American version of characters like Dr. Hook as they are played here by Søren Pilmark next to his American version, sympathetic but even before turning into a darker figure of Season 2 distributing cocaine to the staff made from distilled left over eye drops, I cannot imagine how King would have reinterpreted the second season even if he himself, as an author, has covered very dark material in his literature and might have been game to.

Both versions have flaws. Kingdom Hospital, originally a mini-series but then shifted into being a first season which never got a follow-on, deviates way too much at times, to the point of rushing its conclusion. The Kingdom is tragically flawed entirely out of its hand, an exceptional piece of work over two seasons but with the knowledge that it needed a third season to actually finish the narrative. One which it never get as Ernst-Hugo Järegård, who played Stig Helmer the egotistic Swedish doctor who hates "Danish scum", passed and left the production without a key character and a lot of loose threads as a result.

In context, when the first series came to be in 1994, this was after Europa (1991), von Trier's ambitiously stylised World War II drama, and before his drastic shift to the Dogme 95 manifesto, championing a radical alternative of stripping away artifice, with Breaking the Waves (1996) coming in between the two series with a notable change in his style and tone. Von Trier's really divisive reputation even separate to his films does not have to be considered with The Kingdom, even when he walks out at the end credits of every episode to make thoughtful comments on the programme, instead here a pure genre hybrid where he can still sneak in satire. Namely, that this is a medical soap opera interlaced with supernatural drama that eventually turns into pure horror by season two.

Truthfully, I prefer Season Two. The original season is more highly regarded, and with a few loose threads notwithstanding, it can work as one giant story with a great twist ending. Truthfully, it is a very generic supernatural story of a ghost girl haunting the elevator at the hospital, the plot recreated by Kingdom Hospital with a far more elaborate scope including time travel and a talking anteater. What elevates The Kingdom's first season is that, looped around this, is the medical show and its idiosyncratic characters. In one of the best openings of a TV show, The Kingdom always starts with the point that the past of the hospital, when it was once bleaching pools and the supernatural, will break through the foundations rather than scepticism. It also immediately cuts to television show opening credits, suggesting a regular medical soap opera, with also one of the best TV themes, an evocative choral chant over nineties synth.

A large portion of the series is also comedy, which is some of the best material, one of the best aspects that was transported to the American remake and became its best aspect, and one of the underappreciated aspects of Lars von Trier. Whilst something his attempts at jokes have even lead to him being kicked out of film festivals, it is a reminder that for all his bleak and confrontational work he has a sense of humour, which is outstanding here. Certainly, he came to this with a lot of satire on medical science, everything not stable in this hospital before you ever have to deal with the supernatural. Your head of the hospital is more interesting in his "Good Morning Air" project than running an actual hospital; medical malpractice has transpired, as Stig has left a young girl brain damaged; the Masonic group of doctors who secretly run everything is a boy's club who are against occultism, but still indulge in it (including the blasphemy of drinking camomile tea) and are a frat house who use an initiation ceremony that can led to your nose being cut open; even characters who are sympathetic like Dr. Hook has his secret network of trade, and using blackmail even if for noble circumstances, more ethically shaky than how it is depicted for the character in the American version.

This is before the second season where characters nearly die, and end up crueller as a result, or when you discover a secret cabal of Satan worshippers in the staff roster. Or are an actual demon revealed due to a game of word association. The first series, in its best virtue, builds as a very black humoured comedy. A lot of the better aspects came from this for the American version but becoming more openly wackier - such as the Good Morning Air project, or how a young staff member (son of the head), in his attraction to an older nurse, steals a corpse's head for a sick prank. There are aspects which are much better here. In both versions, a Greek chorus of two kitchen staff, played by actors with Down's Syndrome, are there but in von Trier's their dialogue is even more meaningful despite never interacting with the cast, a poetry to their speech of greater meaning then their remake versions. The other is that, whilst Bruce Davison was great as "Dr. Stegman", Järegård's performance as Stig is exceptional. His character is utterly detestable, but he is strangely admirable because of Järegård's acting, making his passing a worse blow for producing season three.

The production's other distinction is a potentially divisive one, but not alien to von Trier's habit of very radical aesthetic choices. The visual look is deliberately grimy, one that could put people off, even with night shots occasionally having a murkiness with streaks from the light sources; there is also a saturated brown aesthetic to the first series, followed by an emphasis on green when series two introduced a Satanic evil eye looming over the hospital. If you can accept this, the aesthetic works, as paradoxically even when he stripped away all artifice, or said to have done with an actual manifesto created for this change in attitude, von Trier has always had distinct aesthetics even when he claims to have removed them. Certainly, he was perfect for a project like this, co directed and designed for Danish television, in which he was prepared to take a huge leap away from his trademarks from before and work on a TV budget. Baring Epidemic (1987), which felt like a prototype for von Trier's minimalistic era, this was a considerable step in a different direction even if it is pure pulp with supernatural elements.

The strength of the mini-series is really from the performances and the scripts by von Trier and his collaborators. For me, the plot of the first Kingdom is more of an introduction to a greater narrative, where you learn of all the characters over four hour long episodes. The Kingdom II is where the show ramps up for me, in the absurdity and horror, and the strengths grow. It takes a lot more risks, a dangerous tightrope between the more serious content and some deeply silly jokes, where a thread from the last season of Stig wanting to use Haitian zombification techniques to stop Hook blackmailing him contrasts against the serious implications found after Season One, that the ghosts of the hospital are worst things to worry about with demons involved.

As the characters have been established, they can now have more plots, such as the head's existential crisis leading him to a New Age therapist working in the under passages of the hospital, or even a minor character, a student doctor, getting involved with illegal bets with staff driving headlong into traffic in an ambulance, both to woo a female colleague he is in love with but also from remorse when a previous drive lead to a bystander being injured and on death's door. The second series eventually gained my love for it due to how it can have two diametrically different sides hit crescendos. On one side is the humour - when you have a dream scenario involving an inexplicable cameo by a penguin, or the slowest chase possible in the medical archive, a security camera and one of the characters, due to circumstances, being in a wheelchair, showing von Trier's legitimate light side without cynicism.  The other is how much heart he could have for all the darkness he has depicted, the subplot with cult star Udo Kier.

Kier's role in season one is both a figure from the hospital's dark past, and probably the most famous moment of the first season, a shocking final birthing sequence that is as ridiculous as it is startling. In season two, having to follow this, Kier has two roles, the figure of the past now openly demonic, the other a pure innocent, noble but left in a monstrously deformed body, Cronenbergian in its elaborateness. The scenes between Kier and another character, [Major Spoiler] his mother [Spoiler Ends], are bittersweet and haunting, a reminder that Trier for all his horrors and nihilism sometimes has touches of the humane which appears from under the surface. For him especially, the "innocent", wise or pure hearted, who appear a lot in his work are people to admire, be it Kier's character here to even Emma Watson's in Breaking the Waves, making the fact they are still hurt (or here suffering to show virtue rather than succumb to evil) more tragic. The tragedy that we never got a third series was felt harder for me as a result. The show already escalates to an entirely different plain when demons are introduced and a priest is killed, but when we get to the final episode, Pandæmonium, all the plot threads build to an even greater crescendo from Season One. One which is grim and unsettling, the kind that leads to the darkest of third series, even Death making an appearance as an onlooker as he had a busy night on his hands. It would have lead to a season that, alas, never came. Thankfully, the show ends on Stig staring down at a toilet cam showing his usual hatred to everyone else, a playful reminder of the emotional gymnastics which both series took a risk on and, in spite of being unfinished, make them still gems.

Abstract Spectrum: Dark/Eccentric

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None