Say what you want about Lars von Trier, but the patologiske provocateur has hardly become more comfortable or more behagsjuk with the years.
Sexvallen is passed a long time ago. Now it is the turn. The rumors about the detailed sadistic attacks on women and children in ”The house that Jack built”, which caused the mass exodus during the Cannes film festival, is hardly excessive.
Ensamvargen, engineer and wannabe-architect Jack (Matt Dillons trivial demoni is among the best with the film) is struggling to draw their dream house. His perfectionist obsession, however, put a spanner in the works.
rather than trying to Jack get an outlet for their ”creativity” by manic methodology seriemörda and shoot a number of victims (played by Uma Thurman and Sofie Gråbøl).
in a cold room on an alley, and then arranging the corpses in a bizarre, private konsthappening. (A source of inspiration is said to be the real serial killer ”The Iceman”, who worked on the order of the mafia, and who liked to freeze his victims.)
Matt Dillon tells us all that its extreme role in a DN interview
The von Premise gränslösheten, who created the most original work through the years, coming here with a pretty high price. The maximum dose of bestialiskt violence and a measure of the trite psykologiserande is a disgusting combo.
Jack says himself that he ”hates the diagnoses that can be written with capital letters”. It is a little funny when he stands and grimaserar in front of the mirror practicing ”relaxed smile”, but on the whole, is his persona, a parody on the perception of the psychopaths (OCD, maximum empatilöshet, övermänniskoideal).
Matt Dillon in ”The house that Jack built”. Photo: Nordisk film
the Light is flat and it is supposed to be american 70, which is most noticeable in the fashion of glasses, but the timestamp is of no importance. ”The house that Jack built” is not really about serial murders, it is about how Lars von Trier’s relation to his creativity, and how the external perception of how his art and his persona infecting each other.
And here – how disturbing Lars von Trier than trying to deter the audience – shapes itself ”The house that Jack built’, in spite of everything to an indispensable part of his filmography. If one is really interested in von Trier so it is here for good and evil among the most personal he’s done. The film, however, is nothing I want to relive, or can directly recommend, but I still see the sentence with the.
the masterpiece ”Melancholia” began von Trier seriously spice up their films with well-chosen parts of Western culture and art history, as, for example, Wagner’s ”Tristan and Isolde”, the pre-raphaelites and Brueghel the elder painting.
In the last film ”Nymphomaniac” had Charlotte Gainsbourgs self-destructive sex addict Joe a confessor in the form of the impotente, spränglärde Seligman (Stellan Skarsgård).
A similar grip is available here, where Jack initially has an invisible interlocutor (the recently deceased Bruno Ganz). A mysterious figure who is a mixture of conscience, witness, judge and companion. His name is Verge (think of Virgil and Dante’s ”The divine comedy”) which gives a maybe not so subtle clue as to where Jack will end up on judgment day.
Lars von Trier interview: ”I think I could be an awesome serial killer.”
The use of the conversation between them, based on the five murderous ”incidents”, is the film’s raison d’être.
the Symbolism and the metaphor of the artistic struggle is retrieved from the ancient greeks, the baroque painting, katedralernas mighty bows, William Blake’s poems are marked by destruction and rebirth, Eugène Delacroix flottmålning to documentary footage of Glenn Gould as the frenetic hammering until Bach on his piano. Bridge to popular culture goes through David bowie’s ”Fame” as the regular, ironic accompaniment. Evocative clip from von Trier’s own filmography deepen the discussion.
”The house that Jack built” is perhaps not one of the cornerstones of von Trier’s own cinematic house, rather a descent into his mental dark cellar.
In the meeting between Lars von Trier’s alter ego, Jack and the all-seeing Verge (the audience? the criticisms? ), all apparently on the table. Art and politics in a tangled mess. Is it hatred of women that drives Jack? Why is masculinity always skuldbelagd? And not least: Is the worst that can happen (an artist or a serial killer) that are forced to work unseen?
The universal male vurmen for hunting and vapenfetischism also be visible mercilessly at the seams.
artistic ambitions freaking Jack and begins to whirl about the dictators, the ”iconic status”, and genocide as beautiful art. ”You are, in reality, a perverse little bastard”, sputters Verge. The svartklädde Ganz – intense and restrained in a grander way – invoke ” sadly Goethe’s oak in Buchenwald – in order to return to a kind of humanism to the conversation.
the Outcome of the dialogue is alternately bland and fuzzy, sometimes sharp and burning. Just as the visual is characterized by both dull lengthy longörer that quite brilliantly told scenes.
”The house that Jack built” is perhaps not one of the cornerstones of von Trier’s own cinematic house, rather a descent into his mental dark cellar – at the same time as it is reminiscent of how terribly good von Trier can be. You think acute ångesthantering, the exorcist who drives out the old demons, and hope that, in the best of cases, can lead to a more appealing reboot of his career, as a return to ”the Kingdom” perhaps. You may find ”the evil with the good”.
See more. Three other films by Lars von Trier, which aroused fierce debate: ”Breaking the waves” (1996), ”the Idiots” (1998), ”Nymphomaniac 1-2” (2013).
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