Case Number 01742   Seville Pictures // 1994 // 265 Minutes //
Not Rated Reviewed by Judge Barrie Maxwell (Retired) // March
12th, 2002  The Charge  ..." prepared to take the Good with the
Evil."  Opening Statement  After Lars Von Trier's fine
directorial debut with Element of the Crime (1984) and two
loosely connected follow-up films (the low-budget Epidemic
[1987] and the powerful Zentropa [1991]) that formed a sort of
post-Holocaust European trilogy, events in his personal life
shook his bearings substantially. Needing to make money, he
undertook a project for Danish television with the stipulation
from the producers that it contain both fear and humour and be
cheap to produce. Von Trier selected a hospital as the setting
for the project as it is normally a place where humour and
terror often intermingle and as a single location, it also
helped to meet the financial constraints. The result was the
four-part miniseries entitled The Kingdom (original Danish title
-- Riget) which appeared in 1994 and was gree