CHECKING BACK INTO THE KINGDOM : NOTES ON PART 2
Last night I went to see THE KINGDOM PART 2, one of the closing night features of the New York Film Festival. Not unexpectedly both screenings were sold out well ahead of time, and on arriving at Walter Reade Theatre I noticed several people holding small hand lettered signs looking for spare tickets. Despite program notes indicating the new series could be viewed as a stand-alone feature, it's my opinion that it would be a bit difficult to enjoy this one on as many levels without being familiar with the first four episodes. The following review contains no major spoilers as I hate reviewers that tell you the whole story in synoptic detail.
More like the second season of a TV show than a sequel, K2 begins with the same spooky introduction seen in the original and opens with episode 5 picking up the story only days after the events of the previous installment. I found the overall tone of this season much lighter than the first, at times it ventured close to realms of self parody and slapstick. The creepy stingers that climaxed the original episodes have been replaced with more of a cliff hanger ambiance here. The photography is just as grainy as before, looking practically solarized in places. One frequently employed bit of visual shorthand is a sort of nightscope type perspective that represents the POV of the hospital's "evil force", a bit cliched perhaps but nonetheless effective here.
While previously the nature of the malevolent force was explained in terms of a sinister ghost story (a young girl named Mary had haunted the hospital because of her violent death and lack of proper burial, with her victimizer Dr Aage Kruger reaching into the physical world via his relationship with Judith, seen giving birth to their "child" at the end of Part 4 ), the spectre haunting the Kingdom this time is even more diabolical. It seems that Satan himself may have taken an interest in the Kingdom.
Much of the focus here is on the dichotomy between good and evil that exists in a high stress environment like the Kingdom. While ghosts and worse continue to flourish here, most of the evil is perpetrated by all too human forces. As the two Down's Syndrome Dishwashers point out : silliness (and bad judgment) can open the door to evil. The ghostly ambulance that figured so prominently in the original has been taken over for gambling purposes. (the modern equivalent of Roman Chariot races according to one character). A driver known as Falcon performs a nightly "chicken run" in an all too corporeal ambulance against oncoming traffic giving jaded hospital personnel something to wager on. The spectral becomes the speculative, good characters turn evil, and what seems like a monster makes the greatest sacrifice in the name of love. While all the story threads are picked up and continued forward, nothing turns out exactly as you might expect.
All of the original characters return, with many of the minor roles from the first series greatly expanded here, and a few intersting new ones thrown in for proper measure.
In particular is the triangle between the three featured interns ; Mogge (Peter Mygind) the son of Dr. Moesgaard (Holger Juul Hansen) the Administrative head of the Kingdom. Mogge is still the same self-interested bastard he seemed to be in Eps 1-4 (where he stole a human head in order to impress a female colleague) ; Sanne (Louise Fribo), the young woman unable to view real surgery but still fascinated by splatter films; and Christian (Ole Boisen) an innocent corrupted by his desire to alter Sanne's mundane impression of him.
Also playing a larger role this time is the Director General (Henning Jensen), the business head of the Kingdom, whose efforts to maximize the hospital's profit potential conflicts with the Consultants' (the Secret Lodge's) desire to retain the status quo.
Stig Helmer (Ernst-Hugo Jaregard) makes a dynamic return from Haiti (with the Zombie formula) ready to continue to do ANYTHING to save himself from legal complications resulting from his botched brain surgery on Mona. His tirades against the "Danish scum!" continue as the pressure on him mounts. However a secondary concern regarding his own mortality dominates his thoughts as he becomes scatologically obsessed thanks to Dr. Moesgaard's joking advice.
Dr. Rigmor (Ghita Norby) (betrayed by Helmer in Episode 4, because of his flight to Haiti), seems to have recovered from her anger (if you recall she was shooting rats in the basement when last we saw her). But a new fascination with predatory animals only hints at the true nature of her feelings toward Stig.
Dr. Moesgaard, stressed out from the failure of his "Operation Sunshine" and the bizarre events of the first four episodes, seeks counseling from an unlikely source in the hospital. A task made difficult by the doctor's what you see is what you get personality. Moesgaard's re-awakened interest in erotica (part of his therapy) leads to one of the series' most amusing sequences. Lars von Trier's satire on group therapy here seems a bit dated, but perhaps Denmark is only just now catching up to the West in this area.
Dr. Krogen (Soren Pilmark, the 'Anthony Edwards'of this spooky 'ER') tries to maintain his promise to "love Judith's child as if it were his own", while plotting to remain in control of Helmer's fate. Of all the characters Krogen goes through the biggest personality changes.
Mrs. Drusse (Kirsten Rolffes) is still very much in tune with the spiritual side of the Kingdom. Ready to be discharged from the hospital at the start of Part 5 she has reservations about leaving sensing that her job is not yet over (despite having sent Mary peacefully to the other side in Part 4). She is soon given reason to stay. Bulder (Jens Okking, my second favorite character/actor) continues to be an unwilling ally in his mum's psychic endeavors.
Dr. Bondo (Baard Owe) still carrying the malignant tumor inside him gets the respect of his class via his somewhat mystical approach to science. Meanwhile as his condition continues to worsen he discovers that DNA may not mean as much to fate as he suspected when another person on the hospital staff is revealed to be his half-brother.
Udo Keir who has certainly played a wide variety of oddball roles in his films gets what will quite likely be the weird high watermark of his career as the bizarre baby whose birth climaxed the first series. Amazingly Lars von Trier picks up this thread without cheating any of the obvious expectations derived from watching the closing moments of Part 4.
If you saw the first series you WILL want to see this one, and I'm sure you'll enjoy it. Despite the more humorous tone of this time out, you don't get the sense of creative stagnation evident in the second season of TWIN PEAKS (a show frequently used as niche reference to describe the tone of THE KINGDOM). All the varied threads have a logical dramatic path, helping to embellish the overall mythos of the series rather than repeat it. Lars von Trier does not appear again at the end of the fourth episode, but he does manage to pull one unexpected trick on fans of this series, which I won't give away, except to say it was something that didn't seem to bother anyone at the packed screening I attended.
The running time listed in the Festival program at 249 minutes was actually closer to five hours even. There was an OCTOBER FILMS logo at the start of the screening which leads me to suspect that this film will be playing in many of the same venues as the first within a few months time.
Dan Reed (Copyright 97)
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