The Danish Lars Von Trier (since “Jack’s House”). A creator who awakens philias and phobias premiere after premiere. For this return, he returns to finish his television series “The Kingdom”, a surprising product that, taking a premise between fantasy and terror, what it showed us were the ins and outs of a hospital and the deranged characters that populate it, transitioning between black comedy and satire in the purest “The office” style. Despite the success, which materialized in a “remake” with Kevin Bacon and the name of Stephen King that was titled “Hospital Kingdom”, after two seasons it was never able to conclude due to the death of two of its protagonists.
Now, twenty-five years later, he can finally wrap up the adventures of this sinister but fun medical center. The beginning demonstrates the joke that this “The Kingdom: Exodus” is going to become with a sleepwalking medium (with an enormous resemblance to the missing Kirsten Rolffes) who arrives at the hospital to be admitted and discover the secret, after having seen the series. of the nineties Again, reality and fiction that Lars Von Trier likes so much are mixed. A magical realism that is exemplified by crossing the entrance door and changing the color of the current cameras to the yellow of the original from 1994. As the Swedish Ernst-Hugo Järegard is dead, the psychopathic coup is offered by his fictional son, played by by the actor Mikael Persbrandt, who repeats the model of selfishness, lack of empathy and hatred of the Danes that is crystallized in the phrase “Danish scum”. The rest continues to be a nice delirium in this peculiar combat between good and evil, with a humor not suitable for all audiences, full of surrealism and that can arouse hatred in a certain type of viewer.
In addition to the aforementioned Mikael Persbrandt and Bodil Jorgensen, Lars Mikkelsen appears as a prominent actor, the former Soren Pilmark, Ghita Norby and a fetish in Lars Von Trier’s career as Udo Kier and as renowned guests Willem Dafoe and Alexander Skarsgard. All with quite histrionic interpretations in line with what we see on the small screen.
A Lars Von Trier who decides not to appear in the final credits because, as he tells us, his vanity prevents him from seeing himself with another quarter of a century, so we hear his voice behind a curtain that only reveals his shoes. And if we talk about credits, fortunately those of the nineties have maintained that permanent fog where the launderers wash their bundles of clothes in the launderers to descend to the subsoil and emerge some hands, with a voice that anticipates the combat between science and spirituality. (another of the capital themes in the filmography of Lars Von Trier). It also maintains the strange song with which the actors and actresses were presented.
A closure in the style of this Danish director who since the early nineties has been shocking half the world. In my case, I met him with the premiere in Spain of “Europa” (back in the early nineties), a film that I saw in theaters six times in just over two months, in those days when a film could be on the bill for six months, one or several years. I have seen all his filmography but, curiously, “The Kingdom”, in its first and second parts, I had not discovered it until this 2022 on a well-known (and indispensable) streaming channel. Which makes me happy because I have been able to taste this outcome with a mind still fresh from the events narrated five decades ago.