In a video call from his home in Copenhagen this month, he warned he would not be able to speak as precisely as he wanted. Weeks later, a visibly trembling von Trier gave a surprise, prerecorded introduction at the premiere of “The Kingdom Exodus” at the Venice Film Festival, later telling Varietythat he intended to take a break from filmmaking. In August, von Trier’s production company, Zentropa, announced that he had Parkinson’s disease. It is, on one level, a gag typical of von Trier, 66, a filmmaker who never has never taken himself too seriously, sometimes to a fault, even as he has created some of the most ferociously imaginative, rule-bending and at times infuriating movies of the last 30 years, including “Breaking the Waves,” “Dancer in the Dark” and “Dogvilleīut the comment is also a reflection of his current state. “The 24 years that have passed since the old episodes have left their mark, and I can’t compete with the unbearably cocky young Lars von Trier.” “I’ve retired a bit physically,” he says, his shoes peeking out from under the curtain, citing “vanity” as the reason. With an impish grin and an appeal to “take the good with the evil,” he ends with a devil-horn salute.īut in the belated five-part conclusion, “The Kingdom Exodus,” which begins streaming Sunday on Mubi, von Trier delivers his closing remarks from behind a curtain. In the first two seasons of Lars von Trier’s haunted-hospital drama “The Kingdom,” hailed since the 1990s as Denmark’s “Twin Peaks,” von Trier appears in a tuxedo at the end of each episode to offer a droll recap and wish viewers a pleasant evening.

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