Venice 2022: The Kingdom Exodus
VENICEOver the past few years, revivals of TV shows have become a new trend. Sadly, for every Twin Peaks: The Return there is an unnecessary follow-up like Dexter: New Blood. Of all the series that were cut short and suffered an untimely death, Lars von Trier’s cult classic The Kingdom deserved it more than most: the lovechild of the Danish provocateur and Morten Arnfred, this supernatural horror/dark comedy set inside the Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen was released in 1994. Planned as a trilogy, it only managed to last two seasons before production and scheduling conflicts led to its cancellation.
Von Trier promised that he would come back to this surreal world, a promise that seemed more and more unlikely as time went on and his health deteriorated. Being able to finally see The Kingdom: Exodus in 2022 is nothing short of a miracle, and a fitting conclusion for Lars’s career in case he really will stop making films after this.
While knowledge of the first two seasons is mandatory in order to understand anything that is going on in this twisted and demented universe, The Kingdom: Exodus does have enough shenanigans to entertain new viewers. More than ever the show has perfected a balance between bizarre, unreal sequences of tension and horror with slapstick, crass comedy: in one moment an elderly lady finds herself in a parallel, swampy dimension talking to the gigantic head of Udo Kier, and in the other a group of neurosurgeons attending a Pain Conference is dancing hand in hand, following a devilish man a la pied piper.
Comparing The Kingdom: Exodus to Twin Peaks: The Return is the best way to describe the experience of sitting down and losing oneself into this limited series. There is enough nostalgia and callbacks to reward fans that waited over 20 years for the show to reach a satisfying conclusion, and the new cast members and daily occurrances at the haunted hospital are among von Trier’s funniest moments. The simple fact that he starts the show off with a lady watching the ending of the second season, and throwing the DVD in the trash while calling the director a hack, shows that he is as self-aware as ever, and ready to put an end to the ghosts of his past.