Some events can have a lasting impact on a family and change the way individual family members look at life forever. The documentary Kingdom of Us shows that in a impactful way.
Vickie is a mother who lives together with her seven children, six girls and a boy. Her husband, Paul Shanks, committed suicide in 2007. He left his family behind, who are still impacted by that, years later. Director Lucy Cohen films them during a few years, showing what that does to everyone. Paul was once a successful singer and, almost obsessively, recorded everything on video and made extensive reports in his diaries. Initially he seems to be a nice father in the images and sound fragments that his children see. He’s kind of different form the rest of society, tries to raise his children in a house that is fairly empty.
It slowly becomes clear that he also had a dark side and suffered from depression. When the children were picked up from school by their mother, they asked her which version of their father they had to expect at home. Even though he is not there anymore, everyone still struggles with their feelings and they are all looking for more images and information about their father. It can be found everywhere in the (now) messy house. As they clean up, they discover more and the emotions that are always just under the surface reappear. Combined with the hormonal phase of the teenagers, that brings a lot of weight.
Cohen paints a striking picture of a broken family. A number of children are slightly autistic which doesn’t make the situation easier and the mother tries to help them as well as she can, while she sometimes seems to forget to take care of herself. The documentary is not very structured and relatively long, but it succeeds in giving you, as a viewer, a feeling of the way they miss this man and the questions and the struggles they have. This isn’t an easy movie to watch, which is to be expected with subject matter like this.
