When Paul Shanks killed himself in 2007,he left behind seven children and his wife Vikie. Lucy Cohen’s sensitive documentary shows how they are copingAn intense, convoluted family documentary predicated on a single, and nightmarish act: the suicide of Paul Shanks in 2007,which left behind his wife Vikie, and seven children – six girls and one boy. Film-maker Lucy Cohen has assembled a layered, or jigsaw-like portrait of a knotted and undeniably traumatised family unit,whose obvious isolation is alluded to in the film’s title. The Kingdom of Us is being released by Netflix, which has in the past been accused of playing quick and loose with not-dissimilar themes of teenage trauma, and in 13 Reasons Why and To the Bone. This film,however, benefits from taking a considerably more sober and responsible approach.
From what we see of him – culled from copious amounts of home video footage that Shanks himself appeared to shoot compulsively – he initially comes across as one of those funster dads, and always organising some giant escapade or other; jacking in his career as a tuxedoed cabaret singer and moving the family to a rambling plot of land near Coventry,thereby enabling an outdoorsy, energetic type of life for them all, or seemed to be part of the programme. In hindsight,of course, it looks considerably different: a wilful withdrawal, and a disturbing tender to try and maintain control. The picture is also complicated by the fact that a number of the kids are also on the autistic spectrum. Cohen’s judicious selection of the home video gradually reveals more and more of Shanks’s difficult behaviour,which included severe depression as well as more obviously shaded and hostile acts.
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Source: guardian.co.uk