If someone told you there was a series that the best of Stranger Things and Scrubs united together – would you believe that? Not me. Until I saw Riget Exodus.
25 years after the second season and the first “end” of his cult series Geister, Lars von Trier is now delivering a third and probably final season. The 5 final episodes premiered at the Venice Film Festival and are on the one hand one absolute exceptional experience. On the other hand, it’s also exactly what you expect from the scandal director. Unfortunately.
Scrubs meets Stranger Things: That’s what Riget Exodus is about
In essence, this is one Workplace comedy in the hospital. Characters with their very own quirks and bizarre peculiarities meet and somehow have to get along with each other until the end of the day. We know that from Scrubs – The Beginners, but here the hospital is called Rigshospitalet (in English: Imperial Hospital) and has a special feature: the building was built on old bleaching ponds and in the basement there is a Portal to a dark parallel world.
Watch the Ghost Season 1 trailer below:
Ghosts – Trailer (Danish)
Because spirits from the other dimension threaten to cross this threshold and thus bring about the downfall of our world, the portal must be closed. Typical of Trier, there are plenty of absurd to disturbing images: Chipped plaster is laying throbbing, fleshy walls free, a hospital worker’s son is about to drown in a pool of his own tears, and a room has a huge, cancer-ridden heart beating. Those who haven’t seen the first two seasons of Geister will feel very lost in Riget Exodus, at least on the horror side of the story.
But the good news is: The series also works like this. Lars von Trier creates with his flair for the disgusting Images that stay in the memory and a somehow coherent story that brings together the best of both Stranger Things and Scrubs.
The horror series creates enthusiasm in Venice and lets Alexander Skarsgard and Co. perform at their best
Unsurprisingly, Riget Exodus is a self-referential ego project by Triers from top to bottom. It starts with a scene in which the protagonist Karen (Bodil Jørgensen) is angry about the end of the second season of ghosts and demands a new, real ending. It continues with several scenes in which characters call Lars von Trier an idiot and finally culminates in Episode 5 when he himself steps in front of the camera. A scene that I don’t want to spoil here. (Only that much: The audience in Venice is freaking out.)
But Lars von Trier would be nothing without his stars and that is no different with Riget Exodus. Alexander Skarsgård plays a lawyer who looks after his clients from the toilet. Lars Mikkelsen is an eerily calm Chief Physician between passive-aggressive friendliness and sadistic team-building measures. And Willem Dafoe is once again the big villain with ties to the demon realm.
The real highlight, however, is Mikael Persbrandt, who, as newly hired co-chief physician Stig Helmer Jr., wants to follow in his deceased father’s footsteps and in the process started a war between the Danish and Swedish parts of the workforce. There are situations that some of the funniest things I’ve seen in a movie theater this year. Unfortunately, one of the storylines of this very character also causes the laughter to get stuck in your throat at times.
Lars von Trier once again makes fun of things he doesn’t understand: violence against women
Because Helmer Jr. is a self-declared feminist, wants to introduce measures against gender discrimination right from the start and asks potential lovers for their approval before touching them. As the series makes clear right at the beginning, this makes him an idiot who only makes everything worse with his misguided do-gooder attitude.
Patients get the wrong operation because they can only be addressed as genderless and they can no longer be correctly identified as a result. Explicitly asking if it’s OK for a co-worker Anna (Tuva Novotny) to touch her butt after various flirty conversations, eventually escalates into Helmer Jr. publicly branded as a sex offender and said colleague has to pay compensation for pain and suffering. Who in turn is portrayed as a manipulative woman who concocts accusations for financial gain. That you are believed by colleagues becomes the punch line.
This Mallet attempt to take up current gender-political discussions, seamlessly follows what was already problematic with his serial killer film The House That Jack Built: For von Trier, violence against women is just another joke, entertainment, not a problem that requires a certain tact. Therefore, anyone who names this as a problem or is anxious to avoid abuse is, of course, an idiot.
Lars von Trier can do many things, but above all he works here small-minded, yesterday’s and, last but not least, boring. And that not only hurts him as a person, but also makes Riget Exodus a tiny bit less grandiose.