“Masturbation,” Lars von Trier tells Screen International when asked how he has been spending his leisure time. “Very much so! Masturbation beats film and literature. It’s a tip for your readers.”
This is a typically defiant comment from the Danish director, whose horror-comedy TV series sequel The Kingdom: Exodus has been screening this week in Venice out of competition.
The 295-minute project is set in an ultra-modern hospital in Denmark, where inexplicable happenings convince doctors that the place is haunted. Following its Venice premiere, it will head to the Toronto and New York film festivals.
Mubi has distribution rights for North America, the UK, Ireland, Latin America, Turkey and India.
Von Trier finished work on the series only a few days ago. Earlier this year, he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. Speaking via Zoom from Denmark, he is visibly frail and halting in his delivery but he remains a provocateur.
Generally, when von Trier attends festivals, physically or virtually, controversy follows in his wake. The bad boy of European cinema will say something off colour in a press conference or a violent or explicit scene in his latest movie will upset viewers or an actor will attack him in the media.
In Venice this week, however, the goodwill toward him has been close to universal. The Kingdom has generated strong reviews. For once, nobody is trying to ban him or his work.
“No, I can’t say I have [noticed],” the director says of the new glow of approval in which he is currently basking. “I am sitting back at home but it is always nice to hear.”
In the new Kingdom, as in the original series, von Trier and his co-writer Niels Vørsel use every opportunity they can to poke fun at their Volvo-driving, Tetra Pak processing, near-neighbours, the Swedes. The Swedish doctor Helmer Junior (Mikael Persbrandt) is every bit as conceited and absurd a figure as his father was in the original series.
What does von Trier feel about Sweden today?
“I am quite relaxed about Sweden,” he insists. “My family has always had a lot of contact with Swedes. I do too and I really treasure the Swedish actors I work with. I agree that I am teasing Sweden [in The Kingdom] but if you compare it to the Danish characters, then they [the Danish] are just as screwed up as the Swedish ones.”
In the new series, Dr Helmer gets into trouble after making unwanted sexual advances to a female colleague in the hospital. He is threatened with a lawsuit, has to consult an expensive lawyer (played by Alexander Skarsgard) and faces professional disgrace unless he pays compensation to the woman whose fake nipples he so admired.
“I myself am very much afraid of anything that takes the freedom of speech away,” the director says obliquely of the cancel culture he seems to be lampooning. “I can’t defend myself. My humour is also sometimes difficult to understand. What can I say? I haven’t heard the reaction from any Swedes. [But] maybe there will be a war between Denmark and Sweden. It could be interesting to see who will go on the Russian side.”
The Kingdom: Exodus was made through Zentropa, the production company founded by von Trier and producer Peter Aalbæk Jensen way back in 1992 and which has survived and largely prospered (in spite of some rocky times) since then.
Asked how he would like Zentropa to evolve now, he parries the question.
“Zentropa has always been Peter’s child. What I appreciated about Zentropa was that it allowed us to do on my films almost what we wanted.
“I don’t have a great admiration for production but it seems that after Peter and I have begun to show ourselves very rarely at Zentropa, production has gone up and the quality and everything has gone up. [But] I hope there will be an edge to the company still.”
Future plans
Having just completed The Kingdom, von Trier is determined to keep on working.
“I know that if I find the right idea, it would be a pleasure to write anyway. I always thought that shooting a film is really hard work but if it is something you’ve written, you are very precise about what you want, so it can be a great satisfaction to direct. I like working with actors also. I guess that is what I will aim at now. But, yeah, I will take a couple of days off first.”
Von Trier was a pioneer with The Kingdom, directing a high-end, hugely ambitious European TV drama series before the arrival of the streamers made such projects commonplace. He insists, though, that he prefers his work to be seen on the big screen.
“I don’t know how it is in other countries but in Denmark, the [cinema] screens are disappearing more and more,” the director sighs. “People have stopped going to the cinemas. For me, a real film was a long film, three or four hours. It was always with great expectation that you went there [to cinemas] and saw films…
“I can understand why directors would like to make things longer [for TV] because they will get more time to develop their characters but I, most of the time, made long films as you know.”
Von Trier’s international successes with films like Breaking The Waves, The Idiots and Dogville transformed the Danish film industry, opening up opportunities for other directors to flourish. However, ask him how he sees young Danish cinema today and he talks about his own family.
“All my four children want to make films. I said to all of them, oh, please don’t. When I started, there were five directors who could live on it [the film business]. You always had the expectation that when the equipment became cheap enough and good enough, something fantastic would happen in film. But I haven’t seen it or heard about it. They have to do their own things, the new generation.”
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