When contemplating the filmography of Lars von Trier, an almost perfect alternation is detected in it between the type of projects that served to give him an authorial reputation, on the one hand, and projects that the Dane almost certainly conceived with the intention of vindicating his more ‘ punk’, on the other. In keeping with that pattern, for example, between ‘Europe’ (1991) – a mannerist exercise in style with which Trier strove to impress the world with his catalog of technical skills – and ‘Breaking the Waves’ (1996) – the film who put the film buff officialdom at his feet- directed one of his most insolently bizarre works: ‘The Kingdom’, Four-episode miniseries set in a sinister Copenhagen hospital inhabited by evil spirits and styled as a crazed mix of soap opera, horror story and social satire.
Shot in the kind of ‘verité’ style that Trier would use a couple of years later as the banner of the ‘Dogma 95’ manifesto, his episodes included such baffling plot elements as a baby endowed with the body of a little demon and the veteran actor’s undaunted face. Udo Kier, a Greek choir made up of a couple of dishwashers with Down syndrome and several explicit images of surgical interventions.
After the premiere of another four episodes in 1997 under the title ‘The kingdom 2’, Trier considered directing a third installment, but the death of some of the actors who played the main characters seemed to dissuade him. And despite this now, 25 years later, the filmmaker has just presented at the Venice Film Festival the five chapters that make up the final installment of the saga, ‘The Kingdom Exodus’, in which re-enacts a supernatural battle between good and evil using a lot of humor and a lot of bad grapes. His scenes parade crippled ghosts, sleepwalking old women with telekinetic powers, and demonic creatures that sometimes take on the appearance of an owl and sometimes that of a particularly histrionic version of Willem Dafoe, but in general his footage seems less interested in causing scares than in displaying a type of work humor similar to that exemplified by ‘The Office’. In any case, and considering that it is the first fiction that Trier premieres after what is his most sinister film, ‘La casa de Jack’ (2018), it seems to suppose a break in that alternation between prestige and entertainment according to which he had ruled for the bulk of his career. At 66, suffering from Parkinson’s, he has probably decided to do only what he wants.
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Partly due to his state of health and partly due to his well-known fear of flying, Trier has not traveled to Venice this year. And that has prevented him from meeting again with Catherine Deneuve, whom he directed in ‘Dancing in the Dark’ (2000) and who this Wednesday received an honorary award from the festival. “I don’t have time to look back & rdquor ;, the actress said at a press conference, to which she appeared wrapped in a Ukrainian flag.