"You know, there
is something that has been bothering Mr. Sophistication for quite a bit. And
perhaps it's more interesting to him than it would be to you. But to be honest,
he's pretty fucking pissed when he thinks about it. Why is it always the man's
fault? No matter where you go, it's like you're some sort of wandering guilty
person without even having harmed a simple kitten. I actually get sad when I
think about it. If one is so unfortunate as to have been born... male, then
you're also born guilty. Think of the injustice in that. Women are always the
victims, right? And men, they're always the criminals"
Everytime Lars Von Trier is mentioned there are
a lot of words that define him and his work (misanthropic, misogynistic, pretentious, revolting, disgusting and many more), and not without reason: The man
was banned from Cannes for saying that he "understood Hitler" and was
accused of sexual harassment by the icelandic singer Björk. As said before, Von Trier is a man that gets a lot of hate and not
without a cause, but I'm here to review a movie (spoilers!!!).
The House That Jack Built (2018) is a movie about Jack
(Matt Dillon), an architect and serial killer who talks with the enigmatic
Verge (Bruno Ganz) about five "incidents" (aka killings) to discuss
philosophical themes and how Jack became a cold killing machine in a 12-year
period.
The film is divided into five
incidents and an epilogue called Katabasis. In here I'm going to divide the
five incidents and analyze them individually.
1st Incident: The first incident is the killing
of a woman (Uma Thurman) who has a broken jack (get the joke?) and wants to get
her car fixed. She insults Jack to the point that he gets enraged and kills her
by bashing her head with the broken jack.
In this incident the woman is portrayed as
annoying and cruel, and the viewer can almost justify why Jack does what he
does, but again, HE tells the story, so the dialogue in almost all of the movie
can be Jack's own interpretation of what actually happens. The characters are
odd, the conversations are weird, and the victims are incredibly stupid and
annoying so Jack can justify the horrible acts he does.
2nd Incident: The second incident is the
strangling of a woman whom Jack kills in her own house and goes back and forth
to clean all the mess he made. Jack with his OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive
Disorder) can't just leave the house and goes back to clean blood
that just simply isn't there, and after tricking the police he drags the corpse
with his van to his hideout while "Fame" by David Bowie sounds in the
background.
In this incident the conversation between Jack
and the victim is bizarre and again the woman (Siobhan Fallon Hogan) in here is
unbelievable naive and Jack takes advantage of that to commit his atrocities.
The strangling is quite disturbing and the state the corpse is left is even more unsettling, but the rest is far worse.
3rd Incident: The third incident is the killing
of a woman and his two children George and Grumpy. Jack and the woman (Sofie
Gråbøl) go hunting with her two children and Jack decides to hunt the entire
family with his rifle. First, he kills one kid, then the other, and after that
he forces the mother to feed pie to one of the corpses (George). After this, he
hunts the mother and to end these vicious acts he applies his knowledge of
taxidermy on the corpse of Grumpy. Truly the most disturbing incident for me
and one of the most nihilistic and hateful acts I have ever witnessed on
cinema.
"Don't look at
the acts, look at the works" says Jack while talking with Verge analyzing
his killings as works of art. He thinks of himself as an artist, an architect
who sees murder as a way to express himself. For me this is how Von Trier sees
himself and artists in general: As psychopaths who destroy people and things to
create art. This makes me ask: Can art transcend people? Can people separate the art from the artist? Can we, as
viewers, separate Von Trier, as a person, from his works?
"Don't look at the acts, look at the
works" says Von Trier, don't look at the bad things I have done in my
life, look at my movies, look at the art I create. The bad things I do have a
purpose, and that purpose is to create the films you watch. Don't look at the
man who was banned and accused, look at the wonderful pieces of art I give you.
4th Incident: The forth incident is with
Jacqueline, a woman whom Jack is dating. He treats her with contempt and calls
her Simple (Riley Keough) and he tells her she is stupid. They fight a lot and
he confesses to her that he is the serial killer called Mr. Sophistication, whom
has killed 60 people. She runs from him and asks for help to a police officer outside
her building, but he doesn't believe her since he thinks they (Jack and
Jacqueline) are both drunk. After that they come back into the building and
Jacks finally acts: She screams for help, Jack mocks her and nobody comes to
rescue her ("In this hell of a world, nobody wants to help"). After
that, Jack ties her up and cut her breasts, leaving one on the cop's car and
one is made into a wallet.
Again, the victim is stupid, incredibly
idiotic, by now the viewer might think that they have some sort of mental
problem, and you can see Jack's hatred for women. His misogynistic vision is
seen through his dialogue and acts. He thinks himself superior to women, he
denies it of course, but you can see that he loathes them. He mocks them. He
enjoys humiliating them and dismembering them. He enjoys strangling them and
taking pictures of them. And the sad thing is? It's that this horrible things happen, and sometimes
nobody wants to help. A manifesto of how awful the human race can be.
5th Incident: The last incident involves five people
and Jack wanting to kill them all at once by using a full metal jacket bullet
inside his hideout. He realizes the bullet he has is not a full metal jacket so
he goes to the gun shop to buy one, but the shop owner (Jeremy Davies) refuses
to sell Jack. Jack decided to go to visit S.P. (David Bailie), Jack's friend
(since when?), whom has been introduced just now into the story. When Jack gets
there, S.P. tells him that it's over, that the police are looking for Jack
because of the robberies (what robberies?), and Jack kill him and a police
officer before returning to his hideout with a full metal jacket he stole from
S.P.'s trailer. In there he opens a door, a frozen door which has been closed
for the whole film, and Jack opens it to fire his rifle and commit his ultimate
goal, however, before that, inside the new room there is Verge, the mysterious
man Jack has been talking to for the whole movie. In here they chat a little
bit, and Verge urges Jack to finally build his house before the police arrives
and takes him away for good. Then Jack builds his house made of his victim's
frozen corpses and jumps into a hole located inside the new room.
Something interesting in here is that the
victims in this incident are all male, and he wants to kill them all at once.
In this part of the movie we can see Jack's demise, and that he was going to
get caught for something he probably didn't even do (robbery). Ironic. And
after this, it all gets really heavy, philosophical, metaphorical and
oppressive.
Epilogue: Katabasis: In the epilogue we can say
that Verge is possibly Virgil (from Dante's Inferno) and guides our protagonist
through the depths of Hell. They travel by many places and get to a place where
Jack is face to face with all the bad things he has done in his life and he
sheds a single tear. All the evil in the world and the only thing he can do is
cry one tear. After that Verge and Jack arrive to a place where there is a broken
bridge, and across the bridge there is a way out of Hell. Since Jack can't
cross the bridge he says goodbye to Verge, and then he climbs around the cliff. If he falls, he falls into the deepest part of Hell, and Jack eventually falls.
Negative image. The song "Hit The Road Jack" by Ray Charles plays.
Credits roll. The End.
The end of this movie is for me the best 20
minutes the film has to offer. Beautifully done, incredible cinematography and
an atmosphere so oppressive and disturbing that when the film ends, we feel
liberated. Jack is no more, because he can't be redeemed. One tear for all the
victims. One stupid tear for all his hatred and cruelness. Jack deserved to be
in Hell and his wickedness will not harm anyone ever again.
In the film death can be seen as an act of
beauty. A beautiful death, a beautiful corpse, a beautiful end. Death in The
House That Jack Built is art, and I have seen this many times (Hannibal, the TV
series for example), and I still think that this is a very engaging topic that
needs exploring in cinema.
As a whole I can say that this movie tackles
many topics (some I already mentioned) such as the nature of art, the nature of
humanity, politics (red hats), women and violence in the media, misogyny,
misanthropy, among others, but it's going to be really hard to watch because of the
violent and gory nature of the film. THTJB should not be watched to be
entertained, but to focus on topics that are part of our nature and society. Lars Von Trier shares once again his bleak
vision of the world and analyzes himself and humanity through one of the most
memorable and vile characters to ever exist.
