Tuesday | March 30, 2004 6:00 pm

The Kingdom
(Riget)

Screening on Film

Directed by Lars von Trier and Morten Arnfred.
With Ernst-Hugo Jäegard, Kirsten Rolffes, Holger Juul Hansen.
Denmark/France/Germany/Sweden, 1994, 35mm, color, 279 min.
Danish and Swedish with English subtitles.

Originally broadcast as a mini-series on Danish television, The Kingdom is set within the confines of a crumbling Copenhagen hospital where a lurid, demented, baroque, apocalyptic plot unfolds involving ghosts, mad doctors, secret societies, crime, corruption, and cover-ups. The large cast of characters includes an overbearing Swedish neurosurgeon who fulminates against "Danish scum"; his lover, an anesthetist who practices Haitian voodoo; an elderly spiritualist who repeatedly feigns illnesses in order to stay in hospital; a young doctor suddenly suffering a Rosemary's Baby-style pregnancy; various medical black marketers, inept administrators, and love-sick interns; and two Down's Syndrome dishwashers, who function as the work's Greek chorus.