THE KINGDOM II

Starring Ernst-Hugo Järegård, Ghita Nørby. Written by Lars von Trier and Niels Vørsel. Directed by Lars von Trier and Morten Arnfred. (AA) Opens Nov. 20. Bloor Cinema.

BY MALENE ARPE

As you watch the Ontario health care system being dismantled and wonder how long you have to wait in the emergency room before someone notices your broken bones, gushing head wound and rapidly rupturing appendix, there is solace in the fact that things could be worse. You could be waiting for treatment in the emergency room of The Kingdom, for example.
Danish director Lars von Trier (Breaking the Waves) had a hit with his four hours-plus worth of made-for-television weirdness a few years back, and now the second installment (ringing in at almost five hours, but shown for your convenience in two parts) in the wacky hospital saga is finally available. The Kingdom II premieres at the Bloor Cinema this weekend, and if you thought the first round was peculiar, what with ghosts, decapitated heads in refrigerators, transplantations of cancerous livers into perfectly healthy people, etc., rest assured that it was but an inkling, a mere taste of things to come.
For the uninitiated, the Kingdom is the actual nickname of the biggest hospital in Denmark. It is built on old, haunted marshland in Copenhagen and is thus, despite being a bastion of reason, research and science, a pretty creepy place. Von Trier has magnified this inherent creepiness until it fairly seeps off the screen and makes you think that next to being admitted to such a place of supposed healing, advanced gangrene in multiple extremities looks pretty good.
As we return to the horrid hospital, Swedish doctor Stig Helmer (the late, great Ernst-Hugo Järegård) has just himself returned from a little trip to Haiti for a bit of zombie-juice to better fight the "Danish scum" he so detests. Judith, who gave birth at the end of the first part, is having trouble reconciling herself with the fact that her baby is 10 feet tall and Udo Kier. Mrs. Drusse, the resident spiritualist malingerer who had succeeded in exorcising the ghost of little Mary, now has to deal with all the other spirits she accidentally let loose. Plus the demon who is the father of the suicidal baby, of course. Hook, the fix-it doctor who lives in the basement, sort of dies, the Greek Chorus Downs Syndrome dishwashers pronounce "Amidst the silliness is evil," the health minister is accidentally lobotomized and the renegade gestalt therapist in the basement attempts to rebirth the administrator. And, of course, the cannibals are still munching on the sleep-lab subjects. And so it goes.
Von Trier and co-director Morten Arnfred are masters of intermingling the banal with the fantastic, the living with the dead and science with superstition. They throw clues and information out and effortlessly pick it up hours later to make some sense of the senseless. The dread of the story is supported by the muted, yellowy tones of the film and the fun special effects. Of course, by the end of it all, you feel like you know less than you did going in, but that's why Kingdom III is currently under way.
So screw Chicago Hope, ER and L.A. Doctors and take a trip to The Kingdom II instead. Dr. von Trier is sure to fix what ails you.