The House That Jack Built

There is some­thing tru­ly per­verse about the idea that actors, as an essen­tial part of their job, must be able to con­vinc­ing­ly fab­ri­cate the process of dying. Some meet with a mag­nif­i­cent fate, while oth­ers might slip qui­et­ly into the night. And there are those who have their frontal lobe ten­derised with a bust­ed car jack. Maybe it’s no coin­ci­dence that we use the verb ​‘to shoot’ when cap­tur­ing images on cam­era. Lars von Tri­er cer­tain­ly spots the connection.

The House That Jack Built is the lat­est and pos­si­bly great­est film from Denmark’s mer­ry prankster, and it pos­es the ques­tion: if actors have to die, then would that not, by proxy, make the direc­tor some kind of mass mur­der­er? It’s a hor­ror con­fes­sion­al rid­dled with saucy decep­tions and grandiose myth-making.

This absurd­ly macabre tale is deliv­ered from the van­tage of the analyst’s couch, where actions are loaded with sym­bols, sym­bols are loaded with mean­ing, and mean­ing is then wiped out with a few care­ful­ly deliv­ered bon mots. It is a com­pendi­um of grim atroc­i­ties which puts faith in the view­er to appre­ci­ate both irony and alle­go­ry. If it also serves as a metic­u­lous­ly cal­i­brat­ed dynamo for moral out­rage, then that’s just dandy too.

Matt Dil­lon is mag­nif­i­cent in the role of Jack, von Trier’s slip­pery on-screen man­qué. He is a chis­elled, chill­ing­ly cor­dial and con­tem­pla­tive ser­i­al killer who views his work as serv­ing the high­er pur­pose of art and phi­los­o­phy. If art is the prod­uct of a care­ful­ly manip­u­lat­ed con­text, then what’s stop­ping the act of mur­der from being viewed as social com­men­tary, his­tor­i­cal homage or rib­ald bur­lesque? Is evil born of see­ing the icon­ic in the abysmal? And can an art­work itself be inher­ent­ly evil? In short: is Lars von Tri­er evil?

We meet Jack at the begin­ning of his descent through Hell’s many cir­cles. Bruno Ganz’s Verge is his sher­pa, a kind­ly inquisi­tor who claims to be bore by the macho boasts of abject deprav­i­ty artic­u­lat­ed by so many of the screw-loose damned. But Jack piques his inter­est as he cold­ly regales Verge with details of five ran­dom inci­dents which he believe sum up his life. With each of these gory vignettes, von Tri­er takes time to flesh out char­ac­ters, turn the screws and cul­ti­vate a cat-and-mouse dra­ma – these ​‘inci­dents’ aren’t just ici­ly ren­dered schemat­ics for some intel­lec­tu­al notion.

All the while he folds in lit­er­ary allu­sions, psy­cho­log­i­cal colour and reams of crack­pot self-diag­no­sis. It’s all ter­ri­ble fun. Jack is also an aspir­ing archi­tect who wants to build his own house, and the action often piv­ots back to scenes of his stalled con­struc­tion effort. As with the film itself, the basic struc­ture is in place, then the bull­doz­ers roll in and do their work. Jack fuss­es over find­ing the right mate­ri­als for the job, and the film offers an acer­bic punch­line which says both ser­i­al killers and film­mak­ers should use what­ev­er comes nat­u­ral­ly to hand.

The film, mean­while, delib­er­ates on cathe­dral design, hunt­ing tro­phies, dessert wines, the Holo­caust, the genius of Glenn Gould and all num­ber of odds and sods. Von Tri­er furtive­ly offers up this cracked opus as per­son­al biog­ra­phy, a career­wide state­ment of intent, an apol­o­gy for past sins, an act of unabashed nar­cis­sism and a sum­ming up of his entire project to date. He is tick­ling our feet with a blood-flecked duck­ling feath­er. Just try not to laugh.