This post is a part of an ongoing project in which I watch one movie from a different country every other week.
PLOT: A surreal haunted house story set in a modern hospital in Denmark. I’m having trouble confirming this, but when I was a kid I remember one reviewer describing it as “E.R. on acid.
MEMORABLE MOMENT: The opening sequence is unbelievably creepy. We see sepia toned images of ghostly figures washing clothes in marsh. All the while a narrator tells us of how a hospital was built on that land The hospital was filled with the greatest minds and perfect technology. “But the gateway to the Kingdom is opening once again.”
This unsettling opening then leads into the most 90’s opening credits ever. Even so, the tone lingers.
IDEAL AUDIENCE: So this one is a little different. Unlike all the other movies I have included in this series, The Kingdom (or Riget) isn’t a feature-length film that premiered in theaters. It’s a Danish TV miniseries. Two seasons were created with a total of four episodes each. For this reason I almost didn’t choose this movie to represent Denmark. However (in part because of Netflix) our definition of what makes a “movie” has expanded. Also, this film is listed in the phenomenal book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. And finally, and most importantly, I’m including it because it’s just so damn good.
To avoid spoilers I won’t discuss anything beyond the first episode.
To begin with the obvious: Fans of Twin Peaks should have watched The Kingdom yesterday. Both shows feature a cast of off-beat, and extremely off-kilter characters living in a twisted soap opera world affected by supernatural forces. Both shows combine humor with an overbearing sense of dread. And both feature an iconic (if very different) visual aesthetic.
The creators of The Kingdom don’t ever want us to forget that their characters are surrounded by ghosts. Even the show’s more light-hearted moments appear in dull sepia tones (think the opening credits of the cult show Millennium), giving the impression that the whole world is haunted.
However, viewers who want to jump to the really freaky stuff need to be a little patient. The Kingdom is a bit of a slow boiler. Like many series in this genre, the filmmakers take their time before they actually bring the paranormal world to light. Ghostly activities are few and far between early on. The first episode is (wisely) devoted to fleshing out the characters’ quirky lives and complex relationship. So if you’re simply looking for insane freakishness, you might want to look elsewhere.
That being said the characters’ personalities alone are more than enough to hold the attention of viewers looking for the unique and the bizarre. There is a Swedish neurosurgeon who often describes his colleagues as “Danish Scum.” There is an elderly woman who fakes neurological maladies so she can investigate the hospital’s spirits (and in doing so mortifies her son who is a hospital orderly). And finally there is a medical student who tries to impress his crush by giving her a severed head wearing his glasses. These characters is so abnormal that they make the show’s ghosts seem fairly mundane (at least in the beginning).
Finally, one last similarity between The Kingdom and Twin Peaks is that its creator is an avant garde filmmaker known for his surreal (and often grotesque) body of work. Twin Peaks was the brain child of David Lynch while The Kingdom came from the mind of Lars von Trier, a prolific director whose most recent movies include Antichrist, Nymphomaniac (Volumes I and II), and Melancholia. While The Kingdom is much more mainstream than his stranger films, the mini-series is still set in a similar world populated by offbeat characters and saturated in overwhelming dread. It is truly something to behold.
