The House That Jack Built (2018): The Evil That Men Do

"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.