The House That Jack Built

Does anyone else miss pre-depression era Lars von Trier? I still give him Antichrist and even Melancholia, but the "just because" stylistic choices of the tedious Nymphomaniac made me yearn for a time when he had enough thought behind his unconventionality to give us his wonderful Dancer in the Dark, and enough humor to give us Riget. He was always nasty, defiant, and upsetting like only he knows how, but something has changed.

Now we have The House That Jack Built; another film that, despite how different it is from every other movie out now, still manages to be predictable if you know your Trier. I often defend strange decisions and rule-breaking in film, as with Michael Haneke's Funny Games, but Von Trier somehow manages to make clear that the only reason he's breaking the rules is that he's Von Trier, the supposed arthouse emperor. See what I did with that shot? Aren't these title cards weird? Look at how oddly edited everything is!

We get "more of the usual" in other departments as well. The documentary-esque camera work (à la Dogme 95), the super-slow-motion bits, the jump-cuts, the lengthy lecture-like conversations, and the controversial scenes of violence and mutilation. The villain protagonist, OCD-ridden serial killer Jack, narrates the film nigh constantly, and despite sometimes doing us the favor of explaining to us what he's thinking and feeling, I don't know that he ranks among the greatest, most complex killers of cinema.

Matt Dillon is good in the role but like many a recent Trier character, Jack rarely partakes in any particularly human-sounding interactions or monologues. It's difficult to emotionally connect with the characters of Trier lately, especially when they start reciting whatever opinion or observation was on the director's mind while he was writing and felt the need to vent.

The movie supposedly alludes to his fiasco at Cannes. You know, that time when he apparently "understood Hitler"? I didn't notice this when I saw the film myself but I believe in the critics (there's definitely a sequence where he congratulates himself on his filmography and dubs himself misunderstood). It's nice that he got to screen another film at the festival after all, but the film in question may have made his future at Cannes uncertain.

In the movie, Jack retells a number of "incidents" from the past 12 years of his life, where he would slaughter women played by the likes of Uma Thurman, Riley Keough, and Siobhan Fallon Hogan - these scenes, I gather, haven't exactly countered the idea that Von Trier has weird feelings about women. I maintain that he gave us admirable female characters in pictures like Breaking the Waves and Dancer in the Dark, but who knows? Did the divorce change things?

Listening avidly to Jack's tale is Bruno Ganz, never seen by the viewer but often heard making obvious observations, and/or notes which Von Trier no doubt really WANTS the audience to make during a given scene. Again, thanks for the assistance.

The House That Jack Built is just not that rewarding to watch. It's amazing how a movie can be so different, so completely defiant, and yet so completely unsurprising at the same time. When you're spoonfed all emotions and themes, and you've gotten used to the cruel violence and even the persistent rule-breaking within the presentation, what's there to chew on? Towards the end, the film goes for a more surreal (albeit at times just "random") approach and I find myself interested again, although it isn't quite enough.

Hell, the film doesn't even have Udo Kier. What kind of Von Trier film is that?

I have a proposal for those who have not yet seen 'The House That Jack Built', Lars von Trier's latest film (2018). Try to forget who the director is. I know it's not easy, because we are dealing with a person and a personality who provokes and shocks, who seeks and attracts scandals and who knows that advertising is best when it's bad. My opinion, after watching this film to which the 2018 Cannes Film Festival scheduled only a premiere out of competition, is that the attitudes and reactions triggered by this film are much more extreme than the film itself. It is a dissection and a psychological analysis of a serial killer, developed with effusion over two and a half hours of screening, but I did not find in this film anything that would shock me more than what I experienced for example at the screenings of 'The Silence of the Lambs' or 'Zodiac' and the graphic visual details do not exceed what we saw in the countless films in the series 'Scream', 'Halloween' or 'Elm Street', not to mention the violent and psychological intensity of the films of Tarantino, Lanthimos or von Trier himself. Whoever manages to separate this film from the advertising shell of the image that the director is trying to build to himself will have many reasons for cinematic satisfaction.

Von Trier assumes in 'The House That Jack Built' the risk of describing five episodes of the blood and corpse-laden journey of a serial killer. At one point, Jack, the hero of the film, played by Matt Dillon, confesses to his future victim that he committed 60 murders and is about to commit the 61st. One of the messages of the film may be that one should believe the statements of those who confess to criminal inclinations and bloody sins. Why is von Trier a special case? Other directors who have approached such themes and characters have not faced similar dangers, but von Trier has made enough other extreme films (but also some sublime ones) as well as shocking statements, so that when he speaks evil we may be tempted to believe him. Jack's travel partner in the film is most of the time a voiceover borrowed from Bruno Ganz, that of a character named Verge, who receives Jack's confessions and forces him to look for the roots of the deeds he commits. Is there any possible justification? Is there any other alternative end to this journey than in one of the hottest circles of Hell?

Matt Dillon succeeds to create in 'The House That Jack Built' one of the best roles of his career confirming the statistics that make the roles of psychotic criminals career peaks for the actors who play them. Bruno Ganz - in one of his last roles, he would die less than a year after the premiere of this film - creates an excellent counter-character in Verge, and the use of off-screen dialogue between the two is in this case perfectly justified. Lars von Trier copiously uses the collage technique by inserting animation, sequences from his own films, documentary sequences (including with characters embodying the evil that Hitler and Mussolini) and musical sequences such as those with pianist Glenn Gould. The original music and the soundtrack belong to Víctor Reyes and the cinematography to Manuel Alberto Claro, the faithful director of cinematography of von Trier for more than a decade. The America described by von Trier (who has never visited the North American continent) is perfectly believable, the realism of the scenes amplifying the horror effect. The combination of sophisticated references, core dialogue, psychological analysis of the character on the one hand and his behaviour on the screen on the other hand can be confusing and shocking, but it is interesting and asks questions that seem legitimate to me about how evil can be represented on screen. Anyone who knows von Trier's films understands that he rarely compromises. This is not the case here either and in my opinion the balance is clearly positive.

You know that a Lars von Trier serial killer movie is unlikely to be like anyone else's serial killer movie; that it is most likely to be more gruesome and perhaps even with a streak of very black humour and "The House that Jack Built" certainly doesn't disappoint. What we might not have guessed was that it would take the form of a dialogue between our serial killer, Jack, (a never better Matt Dillon), and some Stygian boatman who is probably rowing him all the way to Hades, (Bruno Ganz. perfectly cast).

When it was shown at Cannes a number of critics walked out. Why? Could they really have been so sensitive or did they just want to punish von Trier for even showing up? Certainly no-one could deny that as serial killer movies go this one is highly original; you might even call it pretentious but then you'd be missing the joke or could that have been the reason for those walk-outs? Serial killers aren't supposed to be funny.

Using animation, paintings and newsreels to illustrate Jack's 'career' von Trier goes his own way as usual and the von Trier way is, as we know, both shocking and disturbing in ways other director's films simply aren't. If you want to see a 'thriller', forget it but if you want to get inside the head of one crazily inventive outsider, (von Trier, who else), then this is the one for you.

This movie is certainly not for the faint hearted, it breaks almost all barriers, it's sick, twisted & disturbing, and I think only a certain type of person can enjoy this kind of movie. I don't think I'd come across Lars Von Trier before but now I'm curious about his other work. Whether or not this is a horror movie or more of a psychological serial killer movie, I'm not sure, but after watching it I was really impressed. I know this movie has affected a lot of people in a bad way but I really enjoyed it. I loved the suspense and how you were left knowing what was about to happen in certain scenes, but were made to wait and think about it. I don't want to give away any spoilers but if you're the kind of person who's constantly looking for a new horror movie high, then I highly recommend it.

That feeling, when you're expecting a great thriller about an intelligent psychopath, and you get a surprisingly accurate, but still egotistic social criticism, with Lars von Trier's inner demons in the middle.