The Kingdom

Since it's going to be winter here in Western Canada for another, oh, six months or so, I rented The Kingdom for my wee hours' viewing pleasure. Only in the depths of a Canadian winter can you watch a miniseries, because when it's spring-summer-fall, BOOM! You're out the door faster than Paris Hilton fleeing a real job.
Didn't know what to expect from The Kingdom, as Lars von Trier's work is a big spotty. Breaking the Waves and Dogville were masterpieces, but The Idiots struck me as...well...idiotic. And I don't like Bjork's Yoko Ono-esque voice, so that pretty much killed Dancer in the Dark for me (good story, though). So far The Kingdom seems to be right up my alley. It's surreal, it's dramatic, it's suspenseful in a very unconventional way. Because von Trier likes to work with handheld cameras and natural lighting, you get a realistic feel that you rarely (if ever) encounter in miniseries from other countries. The acting is top-notch and naturalistic, as in most von Trier films. I love the juxtaposition of reality and the supernatural in this series. One minute it's hospital politics, the next it's mysterious talk about "the lodge" and a strange little girl with a bell around her neck who appears to be haunting the hospital. The Kingdom staff are slowly gearing up for a war between science and faith, the occult and the secular, Western medicine and naturopathy. Dr. Helmer is determined to wipe out all superstitious and occult activities in The Kingdom, starting with naturopathy and the weird seances a patient conducts in her room. Who will win? Or can these opposing belief systems be integrated successfully in some way?
The show starts out much like E.R. A consultant neurosurgeon from Sweden has just arrived at The Kingdom, Denmark's best hospital. Dr. Helmer is a total jackass, and things heat up fast. This is the kind of guy who brings his hubcaps into work every morning just to spite the stoners outside. One of his first surgeries at The Kingdom is a horrible failure that leaves a little girl with permanent brain damage, but Helmber growls "That slobbering little brat wasn't the first!" and refuses to apologize to her parents. Most of the doctors in The Kingdom are members of a strange lodge that may look like a goofy fraternal order (complete with loon calls and silly initiation rituals), but is really a boys' club in which every member is supposed to help out his fellow drs no matter what....
I won't give too much away. If you like medical dramas, or von Trier, or Danish movies, or The Shining, you might dig The Kingdom. Frankly, it's much better than Stephen King's TV remake.