'Kingdom II' is great mystery

By Scott Foundas
Film Editor

Something is rotten in Denmark again in Lars von Trier's "The Kingdom II," the raucous and enthralling four-and-a-half hour comic-mystery compiling the second season of episodes from Denmark's most compulsively offbeat television serial.
It has been more than two years since American moviegoing audiences were last treated to a dose of von Trier's acidic mix of ghost story, medical satire and Agatha Christie, but "The Kingdom II" picks up just where the cliffhanger of "The Kingdom" left off, with Judith Petersen (Birgitte Raaberg) giving birth to a seemingly life-sized version of the evil Dr. Aage Kruger (Udo Kier), Mrs. Drusse (Kirsten Rolffes) ridding the hospital of its apparent ghosts and the indomitable Dr. Stig Helmer (Ernst-Hugo Jaregard) off to Haiti on a secret quest.
Now, of course, if you haven't seen the original installments (or first season) of "The Kingdom," none of that will make any sense to you at all. Even I must confess that not having seen the first film since its initial release left me in a state of grand confusion during the first hour or so of "The Kingdom II." So, it is this critic's advice that, before embarking on "The Kingdom II," you treat yourself to an evening's entertainment and rent "The Kingdom" from your local video store.
Once accomplished, you'll be perfectly prepared to indulge in the pleasures of von Trier's follow-up, not the least of which is Jaregard's magnificent comic turn, once again, as Helmer, the unerringly deadpan, perpetual fall guy for all that creaks, rattles and comes apart at Denmark's most prestigious medical facility.
"The Kingdom II" opens with Helmer's return from Haiti, only to find things at his hospital in a predictable state of disarray, as an impending visit from the hospital's Director General looms fearfully upon Helmer and his entire senior staff. Dr. Mosegard (Holger Jaul Hansen) has assumed Helmer's duties in his absence, and is a virtual nervous wreck as a result, while Bondo (Baard Owe) continues to decline in health at his own refusal to have his record-size liver cancer removed.
That's merely the beginning of the troubles facing The Kingdom hospital, though, as it soon becomes apparent that restless ghosts and angry demons abound once again. With her hapless son at her side, it's up to Mrs. Drusse to try and save the day yet again, and what ensues is a breathless juggling of a dozen or so cliffhanger storylines, more than a score of central characters and radical shifts in genre and tone more than worthy of the film's predecessor.
Like the original "Kingdom," von Trier's new film is a fearless and endlessly inventive exploration of the roots of suspense and black comedy, an authentic fantasy such as is rarely imagined anymore. Von Trier, along with co-director Morten Arnfred and co-scenarist Niels V¿rsel has done nothing short of invent an entire world and a series of characters unlike anything we have ever seen before. Even if you imagine an episode of ER as conceived by David Lynch or, better yet, Paddy Chayefsky's "The Hospital" as envisioned by Salvador Dali, you'd still only have a fraction of the skewed vision that brings "The Kingdom" and "The Kingdom II" to such brilliantly entertaining life.
Despite its length, once "The Kingdom II" picks up steam you can't take your eyes off of it. Von Trier is so assured in his grasp of simultaneously mounting terror and comedy that he could take us anywhere and we would obediently follow. An astonishing amount happens in the course of these four episodes, and then, there's still more! That's right, "The Kingdom II" is merely the bridge in von Trier's vision of three seasons of stories set amongst the gallows of his mythic center of medical care.
"The Kingdom II" ends with a cliffhanger to best the most death-defying stunt in a Saturday-morning serial. Von Trier leaves things far more irresolute here than at the end of "The Kingdom," and it is already reported that this summer von Trier and company will begin work on the third and final season of episodes.