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.