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The Kingdom (1994)

Director: Lars von Trier, Morton Arnfred

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From Time Out Film Guide

This mordant blend of hospital soap, occult schlocker and social satire makes David Lynch seem prim. Set in a Copenhagen hospital, it's a farce which puts a dead man's grip on the clichés of TV soap opera. The fun comes partly from the deadpan performances - from Järegård's consultant, a universally loathed Dane-hating Swede, to Rolffes' Mrs Drusse, a career patient determined to exorcise from the building the unquiet spirit of a murdered girl. No opportunity for going over the top is missed, no ethical interdict is left untransgressed, no sensibility untrammelled. As a social indictment, it's structured in tiers, from the top-floor, which houses the administrators' Masonic lodge, to the building's bowels, in which work the dishwashers, savants with Down's syndrome who function as an eerie Greek chorus. Shot in breathless vérité-style, and marked by von Trier's customary jaundiced tone, it's a compulsive, bizzarely plausible witches' brew of interweaving storylines, conspiracy theories and paranoiac visions, held together by manic conviction right up to its Grand Guignol finale.

Author: WH

Time Out Film Guide

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User reviews of this film

Technoguy said...

Posted on Apr 07 2008 00:58 Comic gothic tales eviscerating all the latent fears and traumas and ghosts that haunt the big old hospital
buildings in all countries.Some marvellous characters like Mrs. Druisse,the spiritualist-rationalist career patient.
Then the Swedish consultant who hates the Danes and finds fault with all their shoddy practices only to out do them.The young girl spirit that haunts the corridors to remind us that old beliefs were not swept away with new technology.This series has created it's own mythology and is marvellous to get lost in.

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