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Let's get a few things out of the way here: 1) "Kingdom Hospital," although based on the Danish series "Riget," is NOT "Riget." 2) "Riget" is, indeed, a better production. 3) "Kingdom Hospital" is NOT horror. It can probably best be described as a black comedy/Gothic mystery featuring ghosts, but it is not horror.
Like the best of Stephen King's works, "Kingdom Hospital" draws its inspiration from a combination of another work and autobiographical details of his own life, in this case, Lars von Trier's "Riget," and King's own 1999 experience being struck by a drunk driver in a hit-and-run accident. King wrote 8 of the 13 episodes himself and shares writing credit with his wife Tabitha on a 9th. The remaining 4 were scripted by his co-producer, National Book Award finalist Richard Dooling.
"Kingdom Hospital" is not "Riget" and does not pretend to be. A straightforward remake of "Riget" would not have played well to mainstream American audiences, besides being redundant and unnecessary. If you want to see "Riget," you can rent "Riget," but don't look for it here. Instead, "Kingdom Hospital" uses "Riget" as the framework for a motherlode of subtext. From a modern re-telling of the Egyptian Anubis myth, to questions of Christian faith, from forays into the horrors of experimental medicine to frequent pot shots at American popular culture, from an exploration of obsessive attraction to biting commentary on the ways children have been treated historically--all of these things combine to tell a fascinating, multi-layered tale.
While the villain, Dr. Stegman, is rather one-dimensional in his obsessions and hubris, he serves as a mirror to the more fascinating Dr. Hook, a man so haunted by his own internal demons and guilt that he strives to be better. Stegman's lack of guilt serves as his downfall, while Hook's guilt and mistakes define him. Peter Rickman serves as the mirror to Stephen King, as he realizes he has defined himself by his craft (he is an artist), and just as King revealed in his memoir "On Writing" how writing ultimately healed him, so does Rickman's artwork (he's so defined by it that he uses drawings to communicate while comatose) set the stage for his own healing, and, ultimately, the "healing" of Kingdom Hospital. "It's what I do," he says at the story's climax. "It's solid."
"Kingdom Hospital" is much better suited to viewing on DVD without the endless commercial interruptions that slowed the narrative during its prime-time run. On television the story was slow to build and often seemed to take pointless, meandering side trips, but watched in a single sitting, it takes on a new life, and those side trips pay off marvelously in end. This is fascinating stuff, great character studies, and far better than the standard slop served up on American television. A definite must-see!
score 8/10
Mindogger 13 September 2007
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1729242/ |
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9-11-2020 22:43:05