Entering Lars von Trier's The Kingdom

Amid justified excitement about political drama Borgen and two series of The Killing it's been overlooked that 18 years ago producer Danmarks Radio was behind another landmark series, directed by one of contemporary cinema's most reliable directors. Lars von Trier created horror drama The Kingdom (Riget) after securing his reputation with breakout feature Europa (1991).

The series could take its cue from a line in William Blake's poem Vala: 'The dark religions are departed and sweet science reigns.' Von Trier peoples his technologically advanced hospital, the Kingdom, with eccentrics and ghosts. Malingering spiritualist Mrs Drusse is the first to notice the cries of a young girl, and then there's the ghostly ambulance that calls in at night from another time...

As in The Killing, there is a nod to that foreign neighbour, Sweden, in the form of pompous consultant neurosurgeon Stig Helmer (a career-defining portrayal from Ernst-Hugo Järegård), whose cry goes up in each episode: 'Danish scum!' He is caught between cunning junior registrar Hook and the management speak of Professor Moesgaard, a role that runs to parallel to that of Colonel Potter in one of the greatest TV series ever, M*A*S*H. Helmer can only console himself with a litany of Swedish greatness: Tetra Pak, Björn Borg, Volvo...

The eight episodes of The Kingdom, split over two series, are steeped in a sepia of rust and blood - von Trier deliberately deteriorated the condition of the film stock as far as possible. The chorus is provided by two hospital dishwashers, played by actors with Down syndrome, and there are moments that cause a cold wash to come over you. There is startling imagery, including floating pavements and other moments reminiscent of Europa - the direction is never less than assured throughout.

There are moments, too, that presage Antichrist (2009), while elsewhere there are elements of Pedro Almodóvar's The Skin I Live In (2011), the familiar tropes of hospital drama (this ran concurrently with yet another great US TV series, ER) and even jokey nods to Ghostbusters (1984). Amid the grotesquerie and high comedy there may even be moments presaging Swedish director Roy Andersson, while the corridors - we're told the hospital has 30km of passageways - are all David Lynch.

There is, also, obsessed researcher Dr Bondo, played by Baard Owe, who stars as the wholly different lead in Bent Hamer's lovely O'Horten (2007). German actor Udo Kier, who appears in a host of von Trier's work, here makes the all-time great screen entrance. He had previously made a name for himself for campy turns on Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho (1991) and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1993), and he has a greater role in 1997's second series - what is the relationship between his Little Brother and the Little Father of last year's magnificent Melancholia?

By now both the humour and the focus are broader, potentially to the detriment of The Kingdom II and, like many long series, it appears to lose its way - the total time runs to something like nine-and-a-half hours, so that's a good use of a weekend. In 2004, the series was picked up by horror maestro Stephen King for Kingdom Hospital, starring Andrew McCarthy and Bruce Davison.

They will have missed one of the highlights of the Danish original, which is von Trier's closing skit following every episode. In the mould of a mischievous Alfred Hitchcock, each time he sketches the sign of the cross, followed by the devil's horns, and reminds us all to 'take the good with the evil.'

The long way, and the right way

As well as rereading Japanese author Haruki Murakami's entire backcatalogue for an interview that almost didn't happen, I once watched 54 hours of film for an article that nearly wasn't run. What perhaps makes the latter achievement more remarkable was that it was the work of one director, and only three films.

Edgar Reitz's Heimat trilogy (1984-2004) spans the lifetimes of several characters in the Simon family, residents of the Hunsrück region of Germany. The first, 15-and-a-half hour, film was broadcast in the UK in 11 parts: beginning in 1919 and running right up to 1982, it's an expansive saga reminiscent of The White Ribbon (2009) in its tangential take on the Third Reich.

Reitz focused on scion Hermann and his student years in 1960s and '70s Munich for the second part - at 25-and-a-half hours its 1992 cinema premiere is credited as the longest commercial screening ever. Heimat 3 (pictured) - more than 11 hours - is less satisfactory than its predecessors, perhaps attributable to the funding problems Reitz experienced in finishing his masterwork. Though the film is open-ended, Reitz told me at the time he liked the format of a trilogy; he is now 78.

The last part is the only instalment I watched in the cinema - it screened as six films at London's Renoir - while I saw the previous two on BBC2 (and rewatched them on DVD: the boxsets are very highly recommended). I did watch Lars von Trier's wonderful 265-minute drama The Kingdom (1994) in a single sitting in the Glasgow Film Theatre and have been spooked by the Danish director's spooky vision of this haunted hospital ever since.

Something of a glutton for punishment, apparently, I've also seen Hungarian Béla Tarr's haunting Sátántangó (1994), a 450-minute, gypsy frolic set in a remote part of Hungary. I have even sat through Sergei Bondarchuk's dull, eight-hour adaptation of War and Peace (1967), famous for its incredible cost and ruinous battle scenes, said to feature 120,000 participants. Well worth catching, however, is Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 15-and-a-half hour adaptation of Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980), which Wiki places top of its list of longest cinematic releases, though it was another made for television.

Every few years, critics complain about the increasing length of cinema releases, but most films would have to go some way to challenge these behemoths. Nor, as Reitz found, are we likely to see such lengthy enterprises again.

Special movie sidekicks

If you're easily offended: hello, how are you? Hope you're very well.

At the turn of 1980s/ '90s, cinema developed a penchant for differently abled siblings. Top of the list was Raymond Babbitt (Dustin Hoffman), brother to Tom Cruise's Charlie ('Charlie Babbitt is my brother') in Rain Man (1988). Charlie is after the fortune their father left to Raymond and together the brothers end up on a roadtrip that reveals the depths of the latter's autism: Raymond can recall numbers from the phone book he read in a motel; he counts toothpicks; he knows the number of male drivers killed in road accidents in 1986 (46,400) and the number of times Qantas planes have crashed (never). Raymond is also, as he often reminds us, 'an excellent driver'.

Five years later, Johnny Depp's Gilbert Grape was having to care for younger brother Arnie (Leonardo DiCaprio), as well as massively overweight mother Bonnie, when Becky (Juliette Lewis) hits town. Arnie has a predilection for Burger Barn and climbing the town's water tower in What's Eating Gilbert Grape? (I haven't included Forrest Gump here as I'm specifically interested in buddy movies though there may be an - admittedly abstruse - argument for including River Phoenix's narcoleptic hustler in My Own Private Idaho, Gus van Sant's 1991 update of Midnight Cowboy, which again starred Dustin Hoffman as a mannered sidekick.)

A slightly different take came when 1996 Belgian circus clown-turned-filmmaker Jaco Van Dormael teamed Down syndrome actor Pascal Duquenne with Daniel Auteuil for The Eighth Day (1996). Auteuil's businessman Harry is separated from his wife and kids when he, almost literally, runs into Duquenne's Georges, who becomes an immovable presence in Harry's life. (Van Dormael is another with huge lacunae in his directing CV: his follow-up to The Eighth Day, Mr Nobody, came 13 years later; his debut feature, Toto the Hero [1991] is especially worth seeking out.)

While Charlie, Gilbert and Harry all discover there is more to life than their own worries, it is harder to accept that we should start living like their charges. It's all good and well looking at life through the eyes of innocents, but if we live this philosophy we end up like The Idiots. Lars von Trier had the final word on cinema's sentimental sympathies in 1998 - as Rain Man Raymond would say, 'Uh-oh.'