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Hospital From Hell
By Richard von Busack
"Doctors are at the right end of the scalpel--and there they should stay," exclaims a typically fevered member of the medical profession in The Kingdom. Made for Danish TV by Lars von Trier (who created the stylish, frustrating success d'estime, Zentropa), The Kingdom is a berserk supernatural soap opera about trouble brewing in a Copenhagen hospital, which has been built on some sort of ancient reservoir of evil. Our anti-hero is the Swedish varmint Dr. Stig Helmer (played by Ernst-Hugo Jaregard, who looks like a furious Mel Torme).
As the series unfolds, Helmer's misdeeds are revealed. In addition to having the world's worst bedside manner--he insults a patient for going comatose on him--Helmer is a research plagiarist, sent to exile in Denmark for sins in his homeland. He seethes with barely concealed hatred for the Danes and, in times of stress, goes to the roof of the hospital to gaze at the towers of a Swedish nuclear reactor 20 miles across the water, which he prays will someday spill and fix the loathsome Danes forever.
The Kingdom would have best been seen under its original conditions, as a TV broadcast, with time for breaks and to mull over the various plot twists and turns. It's very TV-sized: the pictorial qualities aren't necessarily improved by seeing it in a theater, and the open ending (Von Trier is scheduled to make a sequel soon) is frustrating after such a serious commitment of time (four-plus hours--at that length, a movie has to be very good indeed to recommend). Still, Von Trier's sharp, evil comedy is filled with genuine moments of terror--very effective and impressive, for quite a low-budget film with no special effects other than acting and atmosphere--which makes it a rival to the best of Twin Peaks and as important a horror film as any in years.
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Sharp, four-hour epic marries macabre and manic
The Kingdom (four hours, 35 minutes; not rated) opens Thursday at the Nickelodeon in downtown Santa Cruz.
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