Hospital of the Spirits

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Television series
German title (Hospital of) Spirits
Original title Riget
Country of production Denmark
original language Danish
Year (s) 1994, 1997
length 44 minutes
Episodes 11 in 2 seasons
genre Drama , horror
idea Lars from Trier
music Joachim Holbek :
The Shiver
First broadcast November 24, 1994 (I)
November 1, 1997 (II)
German-language
first broadcast		 April 11, 1995 (I)
May 23, 1998 (II)
occupation

Hospital der Geister (alternative title: Geister ) is a mini-series by the Danish director Lars von Trier for Danish television . The Danish original title is Riget ("Das Reich"), the English title The Kingdom . The series appeared in two seasons ( Geister I , 1994; Geister II , 1997) with a total of eleven episodes.

Lars von Trier was inspired for the series by David Lynch's Twin Peaks . Together with Niels Vørsel, he wrote the script in a few weeks. Directed by Lars von Trier and Morten Arnfred . Cæcilia Holbek Trier was canceled as a scheduled director due to her pregnancy.

It was first broadcast in German on March 11, 1995 on arte . There are various cut versions (see below).

In 1996, Lars von Trier received the Adolf Grimme Prize for the first season .

action

Most of the action in the series takes place in the neurosurgical department of the Imperial Hospital ( Riget ) in Copenhagen . Both the staff and the patients are faced with supernatural phenomena. The notorious simulant and spiritualist Mrs. Drusse, together with her son Bulder, who works as a nurse in the hospital, investigates the incidents. The Swedish professor Stig Helmer, who has an abysmal hatred of everything Danish , wages a guerrilla war against the Danish health system and his work colleagues, while he has an increasingly conflicted relationship with doctor Rigmor Mortensen. At the same time, Helmer has to cover up a malpractice that permanently damaged the girl Mona. Prof. Moesgaard, the department's chief physician, who is completely overwhelmed, tries to improve the working atmosphere through the “morning air campaign”; he himself seeks help from a psychotherapist to get to the bottom of his own problems. Resident doctor Krogen, who has made his home in the basement of the hospital and can procure anything imaginable through his contacts, is killed by Helmer with a voodoo poison from Haiti and later resuscitated as a zombie. Ms. Drusse uncovered a conspiracy by Satanists that centered on the rebirth of a doctor named Åge Krüger, who once killed his illegitimate daughter Mary in the hospital. Åge Krüger, who has returned as a demon, has a child with the assistant doctor Judith: "Little brother" develops into a huge monster within a very short time after the birth . Brother resists the temptations of his demonic father that his suffering will end if he turns to evil. Instead, he asks his mother to let him die so that he can enter the world of good spirits. Mrs. Drusse can finally expose the starting point of the diabolical activities.

background

The television production received praise for the black humor and excellent acting skills of the actors. Lars von Trier combined elements from horror films and hospital series. Despite the camera work in the Dogma 95 style, which was not considered suitable for the masses, the series was such a great success that another season was to be shot to resolve previously unanswered questions.

In 1997, the second season was shot with the original cast, which seamlessly followed the first, but left more questions unanswered than the first. Lars von Trier wrote a script for the third season, but the main actors Ernst-Hugo Järegård and Kirsten Rolffes and three other actors died beforehand. A third season was never produced.

Trivia

The Swedish nuclear power plant, which Helmer looks at with binoculars from the roof of the hospital (Helmer: "With plutonium we will bring you Danes to your knees"), is the Barsebäck nuclear power plant , which was shut down between 1999 and 2005 .

Ms. Drusse suspects the devil worshipers in the house of the Danish Freemasons , Blegdamsvej 23, only 400 meters from the hospital.

Cut versions

The original version of Geister had a running time of 275 minutes and was shown in 1994 at the Venice Film Festival. For German television, the four segments of the theatrical version were divided into five episodes of 52 minutes each. Scenes have been rearranged or replaced by new ones, and some dialogue scenes have been shortened so that the TV version is around 15 minutes shorter. This version aired on Arte in 1995 (between March 11th and April 8th) and was released in theaters in 1996. This theatrical version was shown on April 6th and 8th, 1996 on West 3 .

In addition to the six-part TV version, there is also a longer alternative version of Geister II .

When the series was released on DVD in 2005, the 11-part TV version was not used, but the longer version in two four parts. In some cases, the German dubbing was missing in the German language version ; these parts were presented in the original language with subtitles . In addition, episode 8 of the original German language version contained some parts for which the original Danish sound no longer exists. Therefore, some scenes can be heard in German synchronization in the Danish language version. The total playing time of the DVD version is approx. 580 minutes.

In 2007 a revised DVD edition was released, in which the first season is now completely dubbed in German. As it turned out, when Geister I was repeated in 1996 (see above), WDR broadcast the entire original version once and had the missing scenes synchronized with the correct speakers. In this way, the gaps in the German soundtrack of the first edition could all be filled.

Episode list (TV version)

Ghosts i

  1. The Infernal Host / The Unheavenly Host
  2. Thy Kingdom Come
  3. Listen and you will hear / Hark And Ye Shall Hear
  4. A Foreign Body
  5. The Living Dead

Ghosts ii

  1. Return / Ricorso
  2. Migratory birds / Birds of Passage
  3. Gargantua
  4. Light as air, heavy as lead / Light As Air, Heavy As Lead
  5. De Profundis
  6. Pandemonium / Pandemonium

Note: In this eleven-part version, the series was broadcast several times on Arte and in the third programs of ARD from 1995 onwards.

Episode list (DVD version)

Ghosts i

  1. Den hvide flok (The Infernal Host)
  2. Alliances kalder (thy kingdom come)
  3. Et Fremdmed legeme (A strange body)
  4. De levende døde (Living Dead)

Ghosts ii

  1. Mors in tabula
  2. Trækfuglene (migratory birds)
  3. Gargantua
  4. Pandæmonium (Pandaemonium)

Note: In this version, the series was first broadcast in Germany in 1996. It is based on the theatrical version as originally presented by Lars von Trier at the Venice Film Festival. The four parts of this version were cut into two parts each. In November and December 2014, Arte showed this version.

Kingdom Hospital

American horror writer Stephen King later wrote a thirteen-part miniseries called Kingdom Hospital , based on Hospital of the Spirits . King's story contains many of the original story elements. Although it takes place in an American hospital in Maine , the characters partially retained their original names.

literature

  • Ove Christensen, Claus K. Kristiansen: Porten til Riget . In: Eva Jørholdt (ed.): Ind i film . Copenhagen: Medusa 1995, pp. 286-309.
  • Glen Creeber: Surveying The Kingdom. Explorations of medicine, memory and modernity in Lars von Trier's THE KINGDOM (1994). In: European Journal of Cultural Studies 5/4 (2002), pp. 387-406.
  • Andreasjacket , Sophie Wennerscheid: The ›true horror‹ and its fantastic (ma) tical other in Lars von Trier's RIGET . In: Niels Penke (ed.): The Scandinavian horror film. Cultural and aesthetic historical perspectives . Bielefeld: Transcript 2013, pp. 101–128.
  • Andreas Jacket: Ghost Dance - Home Searches: Riget I u. II (1994/1997 / Kingdom / Hospital of Spirits) . In: Crisis Reception or whatever you always wanted to know about Lars von Trier, but haven't dared to ask Jacques Derrida so far . Verlag Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2014, ISBN 978-3826055379 , pp. 129–150.

Web links