Doc’s Kingdom

Doc’s Kingdom

An American doctor is operating in a Lisbon suburb. Doc, Kramer’s alter ego, lives a painful existence, shared between his warehouse on the quai and the hospital. Loneliness and alcohol are the signs of a ragged life. But his past is catching up with him. His son Jimmy, pursuing his mother's death, finds him and is determined to finally get to know him.

EN

“I am very attached to the idea of geography. Most often, for me, places come before people. Starting with Doc’s Kingdom, what was an important formal idea was the idea of the trajet, a very beautiful word that doesn’t exist in English. It was this idea of filming bodies moving through spaces that interested me. I never liked travellings, very concretely: I couldn’t stand the idea of placing the rails. It seemed to me that it was an incredible pain to lay fifty meters of rails in order to accompany a character. The question was also: how to move in a space in a reasonable length of time, which does not become unbearable?”

Robert Kramer

 

“[Robert Kramer] has created a haunting picture, one that prompts ruminations about formulas for living and what they come to mean to idealists who are ultimately defeated by their own humanity.”

The New York Times

 

« Doc’s Kingdom, scandaleusement inédit »

Serge Daney1

  • 1Serge Daney, « La rumeur du monde, » Cahiers du cinéma 426 (1989), 24-25.
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UPDATED ON 22.03.2023