Riget [The Kingdom]

[justeleblanc]

If you can play R2 PAL, why not get the Danish edition from CD Wow? I'm very happy with mine! Fully English-friendly (specs here).

You sure about the English subtitles? I was sure there weren't subtitles. Does anyone own it who can check?

[The Invunche]

Back cover:

http://www.axelmusic.dk/resources/cover ... 000022.jpg

"Undertekster" means "Subtitles".

"Engelsk" means "English"

[Titus]

I've got the OOP 4-disc release of Riget (Part 1 & 2) -- which I believe is exactly the same as the available releases now. When the disc loads on it asks you to choose your preferred language. Everything is then displayed in the chosen language--menus, episodes, extras/commentaries. Picture quality is very good as well (or as good as intended, anyway). A great package.

[justeleblanc]

Thanks a bunch. For some reason I was under the impression that Koch Lorber offered the only available English subtitled version.

[Paul Moran]

If you can play R2 PAL, why not get the Danish edition from CD Wow? I'm very happy with mine! Fully English-friendly (specs here).

You sure about the English subtitles? I was sure there weren't subtitles. Does anyone own it who can check?

Like I said in my original post, I'm very happy with mine, i.e. I own it.

[Theodore R. Stockton]

I sent them an e-mail last week asking about Riget II and the reply said that had no definite plans and they were "still in negations" so this may become another Twin Peaks.

[justeleblanc]

I sent them an e-mail last week asking about Riget II and the reply said that had no definite plans and they were "still in negations" so this may become another Twin Peaks.

I got a response from them two months ago and they said to expect it in 2007 at the earliest.

[cysiam]

Does anyone know if the script von Trier wrote for Season 3 is available to read anywhere?

[rockysds]

The third and supposedly final season of Riget, titled: Riget Exodus is set to film next year and premiere in 2022. Link in Danish with a few quotes.

[aox]

Same, though I will gladly accept the third series of Riget instead

I see he produced it, but I am unfamiliar with it.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Not new news, but not posted here either: The Kingdom Exodus was filmed over the summer with Søren Pilmark, Ghita Nørby, Peter Mygind, Birgitte Raaberg, and Laura Christensen returning. Udo Kier is also back, now playing "Big Brother" (given how "Little Brother" turned out in the end, I'm not sure what to expect here). New cast members include Nicolas Bro, Lars Mikkelsen, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Tuva Novotny, Mikael Persbrandt as the son of Stig Helmer, Alexander Skarsgård as a Swedish lawyer (apparently stepping into his father's role from season 2), and David Dencik as the leader of a "Swedes Anonymous" group that secretly meets in the basement. But from the sound of it, the key role belongs to Bodil Jørgensen as a sleepwalker who finds herself outside the hospital (and is curiously named Karen, the same as Jørgensen's character in The Idiots). The very sparse plot info provided so far suggests that the events of the first two seasons were portrayed in an in-universe TV series also called The Kingdom and that Karen is out to solve its lingering mysteries. The new season will be five episodes of around an hour each and is scheduled for late 2022.

[jegharfangetmigenmyg]

There's a brand new interview with Von Trier in Danish Weekend Avisen this week (done by the paper's own editor, Martin Krasnik). It's mainly about Riget/Kingdom III. It looks like the article is geo-locked so I've run through Google Translate below, if anyone's interested in reading. Let me know if Google messed up the meaning in any section, and I'll try to translate it manually.

The mystery opening that Fanciful Norwegian is writing about above is also explained. Riget 1 & 2 was just a dream in the mind of an upcoming patient's head! Sounds a little cheap, I think. Anyways, Trier also talks about the voluntary obstruction he set for himself while writing (which he has done with Niels Vørsel who also co-wrote the original series, by the way): He wanted this to have an ending. He's often been comparing Kingdom to Twin Peaks because it also didn't have an ending. Here he dismisses Twin Peaks as "not working" when viewed today exactly beacuse of this, and in another interview I read that he disliked Twin Peaks The Return because Lynch -- in Trier's eyes -- made it as a movie instead of a tv series, and then, what was the point?

There's of course a lot of self-deprecation; he dismisses Riget, calling it his Fanny and Alexander (which according to him is shit), and there's also an "idea" that he has for a new film:

December 29 , 2021

Why is it me who has to be killed?

Exodus. ‘I see some disasters before me and say okay, let’s seek them out. I have a disaster mindset that is insanely effective. It only takes a split second for a comfortable situation to become a catastrophe scenario. ”Lars von Trier on: The kingdom , powerlessness and the end.

At a hearing examination, Mrs. Drusse thinks she hears something in the silence. She makes the technician record the blank sound and filter out the background noise. Gradually, out of the monotonous sum, a tiny girl's voice emerges:

"Why is it me who has to be killed?"

It's the scariest scene in the Kingdom , and Mary's little reproachful voice haunted me for several years. Mary, who was killed with acid fumes by her own father and now lies in formaldehyde in a glass at Professor Bondo's office.

Why is it me who has to be killed? I mumble as I take a walk with my daughter in the pram around the Kingdom corridors on Christmas Eve, and it still seems like I'm getting chills. Here is gray concrete in many shades, and here is - in its own hospital-like way - both soothing and disturbing. The receptionist at the main entrance is wearing a red hat, the Espresso House downstairs at the blood sampling is closed, but the church room next door is open before the Christmas service, a father comes walking with his bald boy.

When Kingdom I came in 1994, I ignored it because I was in the middle of a strenuous cancer investigation and could no longer take the sight of a hospital. I know my way around the Kingdom the same way I know my old school. I have been here so many times that I can not count them: birth, neonatal hospitalization, three times cancerous tumor surgery, 30 days of radiation therapy, countless checks and scans in the following years, back examinations, a series of conversations in the psychiatric ward, two times acute suspicion of blood clot. And then the loose. And I'm not hypochondriac.

Well, and then all my five kids are born here.

I go over to the maternity ward in Rise 5, where there is a blessed calm, but even here death and misfortune lurk: neonatal on second, center for sexual assault on third.

I get in the elevator, drive up to the oncology and look out in the hallway, drive down again and say to myself:

"Why is it me who has to be killed?"

THERE IS , says Lars von Trier, something nice double about that sentence: “Why is it me who has to die? The premise is that someone must die, but it should be someone other than me. In that way, we humans are realists. Someone must die, of course. Who should it be? And then the horror begins. "

It's Wednesday before Christmas, at ten o'clock, because it is in the morning that Lars von Trier is at his best. The times I've met him, it's always been ten o'clock. He just made puzzles on the computer, 24 pieces it looks like. Puzzles are soothing, he says, but he shakes his hands so much that it has to become a computer puzzle. There is coffee and croissants.

We are going to talk about Kingdom III with the alluring title of Kingdom Exodus , and I have been looking forward to it for months, for years. In the autumn, after 24 years, we will finally know what happened when the cracks in the Kingdom gave way and the gates opened. After the last scene where Mrs. Drusse just drove down, down, down with the elevator.

"I thought a new Kingdom was something I could handle in the blink of an eye," he says. "As Bo Green Jensen wrote in your newspaper: 'Trier seems weakened.' I have also felt a little weak, so I thought it would be easy for me. "

He still talks the Kingdom down, as he has soon done for 30 years: left-handed work, handshake, a quick idea to procure 'some groats' for Zentropa. Why, when the Kingdom became the turning point for Danish film and for Trier himself, an indisputable proof of his genius and ability to combine genres and contrasts, humor and horror with the greatest ease?

»I think of the Kingdom as Bergman's Fanny and Alexander , which is shit. There he took the themes from all his films and stuffed them into one. It becomes constipation. The kingdom is my people and robbers in Kardemommeby , "he says.

"When the Kingdom became so popular, it was because it was based on some clichés and my jokes that are so old and stupid that a larger audience enjoys them."

- But you say that as if it's something bad? It's ingenious and popular. It's folk comedy at the highest level.

"Yes, that's modest."

- But it was not a turning point?

‘No, it took a whole year to write and two years afterwards to produce. I always brag that I wrote Dogville in a week on coke and booze. And the first parts of the Kingdom also went wildly fast at that time. We just did it. I felt free. I do not do that anymore. I was probably scared to make it, scared to make movies at all. It's sad because it has been my only real trump card, "he says.

'Abba has just released a new record. Have you heard it? It sounds like something from Cats . They have become too good, too conscious, now they think it must be art. Once upon a time, they were just wild, rebellious, and it's a thankful role to have. Once, I did not take myself so seriously, and that was nice. Now I have to fight myself to get free again. I do not know if I could. I probably do not have that. "

ON THE ENTIRE WALL above the sofa, someone has drawn a storyline with the scenes from the Kingdom of Exodus . At the top left at the beginning of the line it says: »Episode 1« - and then the first scene: »Karen watches Kingdom II on TV. 'Not an end'. "

‘I had to adopt what has happened in the 24 years that have passed: pretty much nothing. Most of the actors are dead, but then I start with Bodil Jørgensen, an occult-oriented person, sitting and watching the end of the last episode of Kingdom II on video at home on his farm and saying: 'There is no end!' That was the first line. "There is no end," she is right. Then she goes to sleep and wakes up in the Kingdom. "

It has all been a dream, which now continues with Jørgensen as a replacement for Kirsten Rolffe's Drusse.

‘I have always admired Drusse for her courage. That she dared to be admitted voluntarily and even operated on in the service of a major cause. But Bodil Jørgensen is more 'Bodiljørgensensk'. She can play anything. And bring to life even the most unlikely remarks, ”he says.

“In a way, it has not been that difficult. I had imagined a real Swede-Swede as a replacement for Helmer (deceased Ernst-Hugo Järegård), but his first line in the script was: 'Who the hell is that bögjävel (gay ass)?', And then we were in the 'persbrandtske'. track. He (Mikael Persbrandt) is Stig Helmer's son, and he has been taken to the country that made his father insane. He is a surgeon and is in the Kingdom to find his father, and of course it goes completely wrong. Persbrandt was very happy to be with. I like to let actors be free, I try to take the best they can do and then expand it. I let the chickens run. They like that. "

Persbrandt's partner is Lars Mikkelsen, who is a kind of replacement for my personal favorite, chief physician Einar Moesgaard, him with Operation Morgenluft. He's the most conflict - shy man in the world, and he can not even see it. It is the genius of the Kingdom: the portraits of people who cannot even see their most prominent characteristic; here the painful, the funny, the eerie arise.

»Lars Mikkelsen is just as conflict-averse as Moesgaard. It works very well. Conflict shyness is a trait that is fun to portray because you can see so clearly how ridiculous it is. "

He talks several times about his joy of writing dialogue.

‘That might be the only thing I really think is funny. You build up the characters, and if you have devised a strong character, you are free. Then it is like a chessboard where the different pieces have some properties. Then I say okay, then I try to go with this piece and see what happens. Then I see some disasters before me and say okay, let's seek them out. I have a disaster mindset that is insanely effective. It only takes a split second for a comfortable situation to become a disaster scenario, "he says.

"Just my feeling that the river out there, you can then drown in. We are in the world of anxiety here. I have a therapist who is very sensible and who says you have to stop yourself before the thought continues on autopilot. Look at yourself from the outside and do some breathing exercises. So the negative thought runs on such a sushi band running around and around, and when it comes by, I try to look at it with kindness, no matter how bad it is. "

- Does it work?

"No, but it makes a lot of sense."

"Disaster thinking is also a tool," he says. ‘When I can figure out how to use it, I'm one step ahead of the viewers, right? But it is not easy. It is also part of something else and more ... problematic. When disasters just feel suffocating. "

"I'm just having a cup of coffee," he says, going to the coffee machine and apologizing for his tremor, the shaking hands, again. The constant shaking makes him slow in it, he explains. It has also gotten worse; he can hardly hold on to a cup. Whether it is his anxiety medication that makes him shake, he does not know.

'It could also be Parkinson's, but now I'm going for a report, so we'll have to see. It's insanely annoying, especially since I've become very vain about it. I do not like going out so much anymore, I'm afraid I can figure out how to get the credit card through up in Brugsen. Then I stay home. When I'm alone, I do not feel it, and it is dangerous in itself. I wall myself inside. In return, I have taken the corona with crushing calm. It has not affected me at all. "

LARS VON TRIER wrote the manuscript for Kingdom I and II with Niels Vørsel, who has also been with this time. In the 1990s, they wrote separately and split the scenes. This time, they did short sessions of two hours, where together they wrote intensively on eight different narrative threads that are in Kingdom III.

“I have read a lot of Strindberg in recent years and I am very fond of him. He lived right over here in Holte for a few years. He was in the violence of his emotions, wild and intuitive, unlike Ibsen. Ibsen set a dramaturgical standard, which the whole world has followed ever since. Things are in order. A rifle is purchased in act two and must be fired in act three. We hear 14 times that they can not afford to pay for a fire insurance in the home, and then you know that then the house burns down enough, and when it does, it is with very little enthusiasm. I am a great admirer of Strindberg's intuition and chaos and freedom. And he came to hate the Danes, just like Bertold Brecht and all the other gifted foreigners who came to live here. Strindberg called Denmark 'Fækalieland'. The Danes were the lowest caste. All the opposite of Sweden.In the end, he had to flee to Switzerland, Denmark's ultimate opposite, "he says.

»Dramaturgy is the work of Satan. We should preferably feel happy again when we walk out of the cinema. Then everything is in place. At film school, they said kill your darling s to cultivate the story and make it fall into place, but that's idiotic. Life is not safe. I mean, it's a lie that everything is in place. You mean, like, saltines and their ilk, eh?

The first part of the Kingdom came a few years after the Twin Peaks , which Lars von Trier saw many times and was "joking with".

"It's an explosion of good ideas," he says. »But Twin Peaks does not end, the balls hang in the air like eternal, floating table tennis balls, and the series suffers when you see it again. So I've given myself the leg up that there has to be an end. The eight threads of the Kingdom are to be completed. And it has not been easy. "

- But it is not free and intuitive? The lack of ending in 'Kingdom II' has made us ponder for a quarter of a century!

'Yes, but I want to make it difficult for myself, right? It's not so good with too much freedom either. I can 't handle that. I always set rules for myself, you know. Freedom is not good for my head. "

- 24 years ago there was only television. Now there's Netflix and HBO. Three seasons, ten episodes, 30 hours in total. Do you want to?

»No, streaming has its time. I think you get tired of them, but I do not see them either. I see almost nothing. Those series are so long; it's a way to have a whole new family, and it's nice. The actors end up stuck in their roles. And those who make them and write them become lazy. "

- You do not have to make a series for four seasons on HBO?

"No, but life is too short for that."
I TRY to get him to relate to the difference between Denmark then and now. In 1994, Nyrup was elected for the first time after the Tamil case. Clinton was president. The Oslo process was alive. Nobody talked about the climate, everyone about the joys of globalization and the victory of democracy. That's a million years ago. Rigshospitalet was the old Kingdom without new, bright extensions with memory clinics and patient hotels.

"Well," he says. »But the story is the story. It's the same. Well, a lot of new buildings have been built in the Kingdom, which, as the hospital director Bob (still played by Henning Jensen) says, could just as well be part of Tivoli. He has pasted wine cartons up on his window to avoid looking at all the shit. "

"And the doctors, they are also the same. After all, they are not gods just because they have completed their studies. But I was told that all the new young doctors will do trophy surgeries, such some spectacular ones that take several days. Gender reassignment surgery and the like. They can not get anyone to remove a tumor or change a hip. They do not mind. So Nikolaj Lie Kaas is with, and he is such a person. A trophy hunter. "

- But Denmark is not the same, and you are not the same?

“It's not something I think about that much. You must feel the same way about Weekendavisen, right? You can not go and philosophize about what you do all the time. You have a newspaper to make. The world's smartest newspaper to the world's dumbest people. I make movies. My jokes are still the old, flat ones. And the people of the Kingdom are still saying to one another, which is completely wrong. "

- I am very pleased. We are also Des with our readers.

"Well yes, why not."

- You make a satirical series with 24 years between the episodes. Satire is a dangerous field today. You will be accused of being a boomer, misogynist, racist, climate denier ...

‘I have tried to avoid MeToo in the Kingdom. But I go and think of a film that could be called The War of the Sexes. "

- What was it about?

»About a world war between men and women. That would be completely iconic. It is always the case in war that if one has nuclear weapons, then the other must also have them. Therefore, they would be equally stupid, the women and the men. And vicious. I imagine there are some women in the maternity ward who are ready to kill the boys who are coming. "

- It's Mutual Assured Destruction, right? They must also be able to reproduce, right?

‘Yes, but maybe they can snatch the semen from the men they kill. But I do not have much other than the title, it is good, I think, like the War of the Worlds. I just thought it sounded dead funny. There is not really any story, in any case it will not be Doctor Zhivago. "

- But an easy and cheerful film?

"Yes, I think cheerfulness has always had some kind of healing effect."

- Are you good at staying cheerful?

"No! I'm insanely bad at that. "

IT HAS BEEN A FEW HOURS. It has been a wonderful conversation, which has hardly been about his illnesses - and not at all about drugs and alcohol. It's Christmas soon, and von Trier is scheduled to spend time with his children and grandchildren. It sounds nice, and maybe it is, even though he's not feeling well.

“When I thought the Kingdom was going to be settled in a jiffy, I might have known it was a lie. I do not have the courage and the strength. It has really been an effort. In the spring, I turned 65 and thought very clearly that it was coming to an end. "

- What's up?

"Life."

- What happened then?

'Maybe it's this shaking. It feels very ... wrong. I feel even more powerless. "

- Have you often thought: Why is it me who has to be killed?

"Yes, it's quite typically something I ask myself."

- Do you feel unfairly treated by life?

"Yes! It's too painful. "

- In relation to what it could be? Or what you can see others have?

“I've just had it unusual ... I do not know if it's unusual compared to other people, but compared to my colleagues I've had it unusually hard. I know that this is also the basis for being able to tell stories in a slightly different way. "

- Maybe it's been a gift too?

"It's not close at all. It does not measure up to that. "

- What's at the end of your anxiety? Are you afraid to die?

"At least I'm scared of the treatment before it happens."

- Can there be nothing reassuring about leaving it all to people in coats? That's how I feel.

"Do you think I seem reassured by that thought?"

- What if you entered Riget?

"It would amuse them then."

[jegharfangetmigenmyg]

Forgot to write that the article also mentioned that Riget III is now scheduled for a fall 2022 premiere.

[A Tempted Christ]

First Look at The Kingdom Exodus

[criterionsnob]

A press release on the sales agent's website has a few more details:

In connection with the production of THE KINGDOM EXODUS, seasons I & II have undergone a thorough restoration, enabling all three seasons, 13 episodes in total, to be launched as a whole in the highest possible quality for both old and new fans.

THE KINGDOM EXODUS will launch locally in Fall 2022 on Viaplay and will subsequently have its TV premiere on the Danish broadcast service DR.

[Finch]

Got goosebumps from that teaser, and I'm delighted that they've restored the first two seasons.

[colinr0380]

I liked that it does that Von Trier signature thing of a relatively obvious comic gag (of automatic doors not recognising you, that implies you might be dead!) but makes it novel and exciting again as with that giant revolving door being set off by the bird it lets the character walk straight forward rather than having to make any effort!

[Computer Raheem]

Rewatching the teaser, especially as someone who has not seen The Kingdom, it is interesting (and somewhat surprising) to see von Trier film in a such a measured, precise manner, with little of the shaky, Dogme-esque handheld and jumpy editing that has been his trademark since Breaking The Waves.

Also, to anyone who has seen The Kingdom proper, do you know where it is available to watch?

[ianthemovie]

It looks like the original series is streaming through Kanopy, which I discovered by searching my local library's website.

[Computer Raheem]

It looks like the original series is streaming through Kanopy, which I discovered by searching my local library's website.

Thank you! Kanopy always come in handy in times like this.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Rewatching the teaser, especially as someone who has not seen The Kingdom, it is interesting (and somewhat surprising) to see von Trier film in a such a measured, precise manner, with little of the shaky, Dogme-esque handheld and jumpy editing that has been his trademark since Breaking The Waves.

The shift after she goes through the door leads me to think the trailer is deliberately juxtaposing the two styles and that the bulk of the series will be in the same shakycam mold as the originals.

It might be worth waiting for the restorations to watch the original series, since based on the the Breaking the Waves precedent they'll be downright revelatory. The series was made in roughly the same fashion (16mm transferred to video and then back to film), and going back to the original film source for the Breaking the Waves remaster made it look like a completely different movie. (Though I suppose that could be an argument for checking them out on Kanopy instead...)

[yoloswegmaster]

MUBI have acquired the rights to all 3 seasons of The Kingdom.

[jegharfangetmigenmyg]

So, the remastered version of the original Kingdom series is now streaming on the Nordic platform, Viaplay. I have yet to check it out myself, but reports say that it looks "amazing". However, and that indeed is a massive however, not surprisingly they also say that the original 1.33:1 has been cropped to conform to standard widescreen. AND, apparently, some "digital ehnacement" has also been performed. I automatically interpret that as "degraining".

I am of course aware that Kingdom was blown up to 35mm wide format for its theatrical release, but the footage was certainly shot on 1.33:1 16mm. Also, what makes any digital fidgeting especially abominable is the fact that the visual style of Kingdom of course is historically important as a precursor to Dogme. I can't believe that Von Trier let them do this. What's worse, we can probably be pretty certain that this won't get released in its original aspect if it gets a physical edition...

Trailer for the remastered version.

[swo17]

A cheeky YouTube commenter at that link suggests that it has not been cropped but merely opened up. I'm also curious how this will look because, as it's been presented on DVD, a lot of the film looks vertically squished to begin with, as though it could stand to be stretched out to a wider ratio (though not all the way to 16:9). Is this intentional?

[jegharfangetmigenmyg]

A cheeky YouTube commenter at that link suggests that it has not been cropped but merely opened up. I'm also curious how this will look because, as it's been presented on DVD, a lot of the film looks vertically squished to begin with, as though it could stand to be stretched out to a wider ratio (though not all the way to 16:9). Is this intentional?

Well, you may actually be right. Very interesting. I found a couple of additional clips from the remastered version on the Zentropa youtube-channel (1, 2, 3, 4), and I just did a quick comparison with the original Danish PAL dvd, released by Zentropa back in the day.

And, lo and behold, it does indeed look squeezed, and indeed the remaster has been opened up. It also looks as if the cropping has been manually and carefully done, as in some shots it has been cropped on top and bottom, but check out the second capture. Here, the cropping has solely been done on the bottom so as not to cropped Moesgaard's hair:

Episode 1



Episode 3A



Episode 3B



Episode 5