The House That Jack Built – first look review

Rumours cir­cu­lat­ed at the 2018 Cannes Film Fes­ti­val that 100 peo­ple, no less, walked out of the world pre­mière of Lars von Trier’s new fea­ture, The House That Jack Built. They were appar­ent­ly pro­pelled from their seats by scenes of shock­ing vio­lence against women and chil­dren. With result­ing trep­i­da­tion the good ladies and gen­tle­men of the press corps climbed the steps of the Grand Cin­e­ma Lumiere to take what appeared as a dose of sick med­i­cine, pon­der­ing as to the depths of abhor­rence that this for­mer Cannes per­sona non gra­ta had brought back from his sev­en year exile.

Curi­ous­ly, for a tale of a 12-year mur­der spree in which chil­dren are, indeed, gunned down and a woman is muti­lat­ed in an extreme­ly nasty fash­ion, the vio­lence is more taste­less than dis­turb­ing. Jack (a glassy-eyed Matt Dil­lon) per­pe­trates deeds which go beyond pure killing to become acts of sadis­tic cru­el­ty, using knives, guns, his bare hands and car jack as the tools of his trade.

Yet an atmos­phere of hor­ror is depen­dent on empathis­ing with how vic­tims feel as they both endure pain and fear death, and this is not a fre­quen­cy that the film tunes in to. It’s not the fault of per­form­ers, who act as well as they can with­in the lim­it­ed sphere of the bulls­eye drawn upon them. The sup­port­ing cast of vic­tims, pre­dom­i­nant­ly women, (includ­ing Uma Thur­man and Riley Keough) who show up to be mowed down don’t have enough sub­stance to pass as char­ac­ters. Jack doesn’t kill peo­ple, he kills whim­per­ing meat pup­pets. Von Tri­er is inter­est­ed in mur­der as an aca­d­e­m­ic enquiry into the soul of the male per­pe­tra­tor, and applies lit­tle-to-no flesh on the bones of those poor crea­tures on the receiv­ing end.

Von Trier’s pre­vi­ous film, Nympho­ma­ni­ac, from 2014, employed con­ver­sa­tions between a cen­tral char­ac­ter and a con­fi­dante to explore Lars von Trier’s inner dichotomies. So too does The House That Jack Built. The film is torn over whether Jack is a pathet­ic sociopath, or – get this – a great artist. Jack advances the for­mer posi­tion, pat­ting him­self on the back for progress in the field of clear­ing up blood. A mys­te­ri­ous fig­ure named Verge (Bruno Ganz) is his spar­ring part­ner who tears into this self-aggran­dis­ing psy­chopath with lac­er­at­ing mockery.

It soon becomes clear that we are watch­ing Nympho­ma­ni­ac by anoth­er name. The films are inter­change­able in using an omni­scient dia­logue as the philo­soph­i­cal spine behind the vis­cera. The films are also sim­i­lar in the way they frame time, each using chap­ters which are pep­pered with digres­sions explor­ing schol­ar­ly cul­tur­al matters.

Around chap­ter four the film reveals its hand in terms of ladling on ref­er­ences to famous atroc­i­ties and famous artists alike, with the impli­ca­tion being that one can go hand-in-hand with the oth­er. Von Trier’s script (based on a sto­ry by Jen­le Hal­lund) is full of sug­ges­tive lines like: ​“Old cathe­drals often have great art hid­den in dark cor­ners where only God can see.”

The (Cannes) jury may be out over how con­vinc­ing this case is, but there is one brick in the house that is all killer, no filler. And it is with that we wel­come back Matt Dil­lon to lead­ing man ter­ri­to­ry. His hulk­ing, husky pres­ence brings a non­cha­lance to a char­ac­ter that, in a dif­fer­ent body, would be nowt but a lack­lus­tre creep. All high­lights come cour­tesy of small facial tics as he calm­ly under-reacts to insane­ly dra­mat­ic sce­nar­ios. A fur­rowed eye­brow of con­cern is raised upon notic­ing how much blood has stained a pris­tine floor, or the flick­er of a smile is flashed on notic­ing that a tor­ren­tial rain­storm hap­pened to wash away the huge riv­er of red left on the road as he dragged a body behind his van. It takes a ded­i­cat­ed com­ic pro­fes­sion­al to sell the black humour that Lars has built, and in Dil­lon, the direc­tor got just that.

While von Trier’s big idea about the cre­ative ben­e­fits of mur­der­ing over 60 peo­ple nev­er mar­ries with the con­fes­sion­al anguish pow­er­ing the dia­logue, the film still pos­sess­es a unique charm, and this is a con­se­quence of the dis­tinct per­son­al­i­ty of its dis­grace­ful cre­ator. From Antichrist onwards, von Tri­er has been tak­ing pri­vate emo­tion­al strug­gles and blow­ing them up into ghoul­ish and bom­bas­tic provocations.

In 2011’s Melan­cho­lia, depres­sion lit­er­al­ly equates to the end of the world. The Dane has nev­er been inter­est­ed in mak­ing films that appear nat­ur­al or earnest. The Five Obstruc­tions is a fas­ci­nat­ing doc­u­men­tary that lays bare the strate­gic rea­sons behind his obstruc­tive nature. The House That Jack Built is the pin­na­cle of a shame­less will­ing­ness to exploit out­ra­geous fic­tion­al con­ceits and smug­gle in his tor­rid inter­nal con­flicts. The big ques­tion is: why has Lars von Tri­er cho­sen to par­lay his neu­roses into an exer­cise in rad­i­cal empa­thy with ser­i­al killers? Is there some­thing he isn’t telling us?