The House That Jack BuiltWe wrap ourselves up in thoughts like "evil must be punished in the end" to keep ourselves warm at night--to uphold abstract concepts of justice and goodness as the governing powers of the universe. But when does judgment fall upon those most deserving? The House That Jack Built is about a serial killer--namely Jack (Matt Dillon)--who approaches his vocation as an "artist" might a canvas. He recounts select events from his murderous past to "Verge" (Bruno Ganz), his companion and critic in his retrospective. The more that Jack reveals of himself, the stronger the case becomes that there are few more deserving of being consigned to the flames of Hell than he.
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Written and directed by provocateur supreme, Lars von Trier, The House That Jack Built is a horror movie by default. In its healthy running time just under three hours, it contains several scenes of gruesome and shocking brutality--but far less violent acts per minute than you may remember after watching it. The House That Jack Built is Lars von Trier's most self-referential film, and a deliberate self-criticism and cynical evaluation of what it means to be an artist, and the artist's accountability in his work--and outside of it. By making Jack a cipher for himself, Lars von Trier has created his own insane take on Fellini's 8 1/2, making a confession of his aesthetics and simultaneously satirizing himself. (The film even includes a montage of rapid-fire clips from his oeuvre to emphasize the point.) It is safe to say that Lars von Trier has made provocative statements--at Cannes and elsewhere--designed to get a rise out of his audience...a kind of supplemental "performance art" to accompany his movies. The "fame" (or infamy) born from these radical and antagonistic outbursts is manifested through Jack and his cry for attention; the pointed inclusion of David Bowie's "Fame" is a nod to this. It is as if Lars a version of himself to entertain his "audience" as he does in his movies, and that the real Lars von Trier may be a very different person than his public persona. Speculation aside, The House That Jack Built takes a serial killer who is a conceited, arrogant, and narcissistic, self-styled artist and makes him a stand-in for the filmmaker himself, with Verge as the surrogate for the viewing audience. Jack often uses non sequiturs and exposition to justify his aberrant behavior, and Verge--short for Virgil, of the "Divine Comedy"--sighs with exasperation at each excuse. Little is known of Jack's past, except that he was appallingly cruel to animals, liked to play hide and seek (with the intent of getting caught), and was left a substantial inheritance from which he lives comfortably. Jack claims that his mother wanted him to be an "engineer" so he would be even more wealthy, although insists that he wanted to be an "architect". The definition between these two professions blurs in The House That Jack Built, except that Jack considers being an "engineer" to be without artistic individuality, and thus beneath him. (Jack's family seems to have been overly focused on fiscal matters; it's unfortunate that they failed to raise Jack with empathy instead.)
Jack's "five incidents" break up the acts in The House That Jack Built; he claims these events were chosen "at random", although--as Verge comments--the choices seem deliberate. Most of them feature Jack killing not just women, but women who come across as unrealistically stupid, practically begging for Jack to end their lives. This underscores several problems about Jack--his brutal killing notwithstanding. Jack is an "unreliable narrator"; the only testimony we have about Jack's killings comes exclusively from his lips, and he's hardly stable. Verge speculates that Jack argues for his killing as an art because he secretly longs to be loved. He wants to be recognized for accomplishing something special, but the "craft" he chooses is something that cannot (or should not) be appreciated by anyone. Jack's first foray into murder comes after stopping at the side of the road at the behest of a stuck-up yuppie with a flat tire (Uma Thurman)--she practically invites herself into his ominous red van for a lift to the local blacksmith to repair her busted car jack. The woman constantly suggests that Jack might be a serial killer throughout the whole imposition, and seems to be deliberately provoking Jack into killing her--which he does. The whole scene is layered with black comedy; after all, Jack does look like a serial killer. Jack uses the walk-in freezer of a pizza shop mysteriously left to him--and just as mysteriously with copious frozen pizzas left behind--to store his victims. He meticulously wipes down any incriminating evidence from his van--not from a fear of getting caught, but solely because he is obsessive-compulsive. After whetting his appetite for murder, Jack follows this up by ambushing a widow named Claire (Siobhan Fallon Hogan). He starts with a painfully transparent ruse as a plain-clothes police officer--which fails--then gets admitted into her home under the auspices of "increasing her pension" as an insurance agent. This episode is played more deliberately as a farce than the others; Jack fails to kill Claire after strangling her, and finishes the job by stabbing her--and then poses her corpse for a photo. As Jack prepares to leave, he becomes convinced that he has left behind a spot of blood where he forgot to check. This compels him to fastidiously clean the woman's apartment and return to his van to dispose of the corpse...only to consider another location he didn't think to check before. He flees the scene after the police show up, dragging her body behind his van, and leaving a bloody smear for miles across the macadam--a moment that is equal parts ghastly and awkwardly hysterical.
Jack throws adage after adage at Verge to convince him that he is justified in his villainy. He cites William Blake's poetry about how the tiger and the lamb were both God's creatures, and claims that the lambs are like slaves and the tigers must prey upon them. You can almost see Verge rolling his eyes during his voiceover, accusing Jack of quoting Blake as "the devil quotes the Bible". Lars von Trier makes Jack an unmitigated monster, whose depravity includes physical and verbal abuse, mutilating animals, and even--in a coy moment of self-reflection--sympathizing with the Nazis. Jack shares stories about how Albert Speer was an architect (as Jack fashions himself) who created structures designed to eventually fall into ruin--and in this ruined state, they would resemble the beloved ruins of ancient civilizations; Verge retorts that it was a blessing that they were obliterated after the fall of the Third Reich. After Jack kills a woman who he has cruelly lured into a relationship, he tries to justify his murderous impulses by way of an artistic imperative. He photographs a couple of his corpses with a vintage camera from his youth, and writes "Mr. Sophistication" in white pencil on top of the image. He then mails this picture to a newspaper--one he disdains for running fluff pieces--in a clear cry for attention. The House That Jack Built is set in the American Northwest over a twelve year period, implied to be during the Seventies and Eighties; that he publicly declared his killings and remained at large for so long makes him a counterpart to the infamous Zodiac Killer. Jack is reminiscent of Dorian Gray from Oscar Wilde's novel, or even a vampire. He looks older at the start than he does by the end, as if he had become younger over these past twelve years by slaughtering innocent women. Jack performs his killings with almost no meaningful police intervention; that he's also a cruel, superficial liar makes him akin to Patrick Bateman of Bret Easton Ellis's "American Psycho" and the film of the same name. Both men exploit their privilege as rich, white males to evade capture, despite being confronted by the police on several occasions. He throws off suspicion by acting like a bumbling old coot when an officer shows up to Claire's house; in another scene--while a cop interrogates a black woman in the background--he mocks the same officer who gave him a parking ticket earlier in the most appalling way.
The House That Jack Built makes a point to consciously offend its audience by breaking taboos of the genre. Consider when Jack plays at being a father figure to a family consisting of a mother (Sofie Gråbøl) and her two boys, George (Cohen Day), and the younger boy, known only as "Grumpy" (Rocco Day). He takes them hunting and trains them how to shoot a rifle, while making statements that he doesn't hunt anymore because he considers it immoral. The scene is thick with tension since Jack has already established himself as a monstrous killer. Without preamble, the mother and her two boys are huddled behind the uprooted stump of a collapsed tree, trying to evade Jack's sniper fire from his crow's nest. Jack is an anachronistic protagonist; he commits some of the worst sins imaginable and diagnoses himself as a psychopath to dodge responsibility for his remorseless evil. Yet Jack is a charismatic man, who (despite his first victim's observations) seems welcoming--at least when he wants to be. Jack has practiced how to camouflage his mannerisms by pasting pictures from magazines around his mirror at home, comically mimicking the faces to blend in with the rest of the herd; he takes pride in adopting different personalities. The closest Jack has to a long-term relationship is with a pretty (if somewhat simple) woman named Jacqueline (Riley Keough). Jack is playfully flirtatious with the apprehensive woman at the beginning of the episode, trying to break down her resistances with a cute game involving a pair of red phones. Yet shortly thereafter, he becomes condescending and berates her, commenting crudely on her breasts and calling her "Simple" instead of by her name. He persists by ordering her to fetch him a magic marker, which he uses to draw dotted lines around her exposed breasts like a butcher would mark a cut of meat--ominously foreshadowing gruesomeness yet to come. Lars von Trier makes no apologies in tearing down any shred of sympathy or fondness the audience might have for Jack through the all-encompassing denigration of his main character.
That Jack has been expounding on his history to none other than Virgil should emphasize that he is already damned and en route to the lower circles of Hell--where he belongs. Jack meets Verge for the first time behind the suspiciously locked door with a red window frame in his walk-in freezer, which he only manages to open as he is on the verge of completing a mass execution involving a single full metal jacket rifle round. The spectral watcher asks him what ever happened to the house he claimed that he would build, and Jack looks abashed for the first time when he considers how killing has distracted him from his self-proclaimed passion; but Jack is lying to himself yet again. Jack is no architect--he is a monster who tells himself that he is really an architect to absolve himself of guilt. He tears down every skeletal frame of a house he erects, whether composed of cinder blocks, wood, et cetera; this is the only act that gives him any real satisfaction. Jack hides behind his intellect to escape the realization that he is truly horrible, and uses a honeyed tongue to suggest that he is just playing by the rules of a cruel, cruel world; Verge doesn't buy it. The epilogue is filled with disparate tableaux as the duo perform their "katabasis" (journey to the underworld), ranging from spelunking through watery caves of filthy water to a heavenly vista where farmers use scythes to tend the "Elysian Fields". Confronted by the halcyon scene of transcendent peace, Jack experiences a singular moment of profound sadness, finally aware that his evil indulgences have deprived him of any heavenly reward. As they approach their destination, Jack is confronted with a choice that speaks to his inherent narcissism. Verge knows that the choice will be irresistible to the vainglorious Jack, and the conclusion underscores that The House That Jack Built is fundamentally a morality tale--and that all devils eventually find their way home.
Recommended for: Fans of a startling character study of the worst kind of murderous psychopath--and also for fans of a sharp black comedy that is highly self-aware. By exploring themes like the indifferent brutality of nature versus the restraint of civilized society through the psychoanalysis of a murderer, The House That Jack Built might have been subtitled as "A Portrait of the Artist as a Serial Killer".
Jack's "five incidents" break up the acts in The House That Jack Built; he claims these events were chosen "at random", although--as Verge comments--the choices seem deliberate. Most of them feature Jack killing not just women, but women who come across as unrealistically stupid, practically begging for Jack to end their lives. This underscores several problems about Jack--his brutal killing notwithstanding. Jack is an "unreliable narrator"; the only testimony we have about Jack's killings comes exclusively from his lips, and he's hardly stable. Verge speculates that Jack argues for his killing as an art because he secretly longs to be loved. He wants to be recognized for accomplishing something special, but the "craft" he chooses is something that cannot (or should not) be appreciated by anyone. Jack's first foray into murder comes after stopping at the side of the road at the behest of a stuck-up yuppie with a flat tire (Uma Thurman)--she practically invites herself into his ominous red van for a lift to the local blacksmith to repair her busted car jack. The woman constantly suggests that Jack might be a serial killer throughout the whole imposition, and seems to be deliberately provoking Jack into killing her--which he does. The whole scene is layered with black comedy; after all, Jack does look like a serial killer. Jack uses the walk-in freezer of a pizza shop mysteriously left to him--and just as mysteriously with copious frozen pizzas left behind--to store his victims. He meticulously wipes down any incriminating evidence from his van--not from a fear of getting caught, but solely because he is obsessive-compulsive. After whetting his appetite for murder, Jack follows this up by ambushing a widow named Claire (Siobhan Fallon Hogan). He starts with a painfully transparent ruse as a plain-clothes police officer--which fails--then gets admitted into her home under the auspices of "increasing her pension" as an insurance agent. This episode is played more deliberately as a farce than the others; Jack fails to kill Claire after strangling her, and finishes the job by stabbing her--and then poses her corpse for a photo. As Jack prepares to leave, he becomes convinced that he has left behind a spot of blood where he forgot to check. This compels him to fastidiously clean the woman's apartment and return to his van to dispose of the corpse...only to consider another location he didn't think to check before. He flees the scene after the police show up, dragging her body behind his van, and leaving a bloody smear for miles across the macadam--a moment that is equal parts ghastly and awkwardly hysterical.
Jack throws adage after adage at Verge to convince him that he is justified in his villainy. He cites William Blake's poetry about how the tiger and the lamb were both God's creatures, and claims that the lambs are like slaves and the tigers must prey upon them. You can almost see Verge rolling his eyes during his voiceover, accusing Jack of quoting Blake as "the devil quotes the Bible". Lars von Trier makes Jack an unmitigated monster, whose depravity includes physical and verbal abuse, mutilating animals, and even--in a coy moment of self-reflection--sympathizing with the Nazis. Jack shares stories about how Albert Speer was an architect (as Jack fashions himself) who created structures designed to eventually fall into ruin--and in this ruined state, they would resemble the beloved ruins of ancient civilizations; Verge retorts that it was a blessing that they were obliterated after the fall of the Third Reich. After Jack kills a woman who he has cruelly lured into a relationship, he tries to justify his murderous impulses by way of an artistic imperative. He photographs a couple of his corpses with a vintage camera from his youth, and writes "Mr. Sophistication" in white pencil on top of the image. He then mails this picture to a newspaper--one he disdains for running fluff pieces--in a clear cry for attention. The House That Jack Built is set in the American Northwest over a twelve year period, implied to be during the Seventies and Eighties; that he publicly declared his killings and remained at large for so long makes him a counterpart to the infamous Zodiac Killer. Jack is reminiscent of Dorian Gray from Oscar Wilde's novel, or even a vampire. He looks older at the start than he does by the end, as if he had become younger over these past twelve years by slaughtering innocent women. Jack performs his killings with almost no meaningful police intervention; that he's also a cruel, superficial liar makes him akin to Patrick Bateman of Bret Easton Ellis's "American Psycho" and the film of the same name. Both men exploit their privilege as rich, white males to evade capture, despite being confronted by the police on several occasions. He throws off suspicion by acting like a bumbling old coot when an officer shows up to Claire's house; in another scene--while a cop interrogates a black woman in the background--he mocks the same officer who gave him a parking ticket earlier in the most appalling way.
The House That Jack Built makes a point to consciously offend its audience by breaking taboos of the genre. Consider when Jack plays at being a father figure to a family consisting of a mother (Sofie Gråbøl) and her two boys, George (Cohen Day), and the younger boy, known only as "Grumpy" (Rocco Day). He takes them hunting and trains them how to shoot a rifle, while making statements that he doesn't hunt anymore because he considers it immoral. The scene is thick with tension since Jack has already established himself as a monstrous killer. Without preamble, the mother and her two boys are huddled behind the uprooted stump of a collapsed tree, trying to evade Jack's sniper fire from his crow's nest. Jack is an anachronistic protagonist; he commits some of the worst sins imaginable and diagnoses himself as a psychopath to dodge responsibility for his remorseless evil. Yet Jack is a charismatic man, who (despite his first victim's observations) seems welcoming--at least when he wants to be. Jack has practiced how to camouflage his mannerisms by pasting pictures from magazines around his mirror at home, comically mimicking the faces to blend in with the rest of the herd; he takes pride in adopting different personalities. The closest Jack has to a long-term relationship is with a pretty (if somewhat simple) woman named Jacqueline (Riley Keough). Jack is playfully flirtatious with the apprehensive woman at the beginning of the episode, trying to break down her resistances with a cute game involving a pair of red phones. Yet shortly thereafter, he becomes condescending and berates her, commenting crudely on her breasts and calling her "Simple" instead of by her name. He persists by ordering her to fetch him a magic marker, which he uses to draw dotted lines around her exposed breasts like a butcher would mark a cut of meat--ominously foreshadowing gruesomeness yet to come. Lars von Trier makes no apologies in tearing down any shred of sympathy or fondness the audience might have for Jack through the all-encompassing denigration of his main character.
That Jack has been expounding on his history to none other than Virgil should emphasize that he is already damned and en route to the lower circles of Hell--where he belongs. Jack meets Verge for the first time behind the suspiciously locked door with a red window frame in his walk-in freezer, which he only manages to open as he is on the verge of completing a mass execution involving a single full metal jacket rifle round. The spectral watcher asks him what ever happened to the house he claimed that he would build, and Jack looks abashed for the first time when he considers how killing has distracted him from his self-proclaimed passion; but Jack is lying to himself yet again. Jack is no architect--he is a monster who tells himself that he is really an architect to absolve himself of guilt. He tears down every skeletal frame of a house he erects, whether composed of cinder blocks, wood, et cetera; this is the only act that gives him any real satisfaction. Jack hides behind his intellect to escape the realization that he is truly horrible, and uses a honeyed tongue to suggest that he is just playing by the rules of a cruel, cruel world; Verge doesn't buy it. The epilogue is filled with disparate tableaux as the duo perform their "katabasis" (journey to the underworld), ranging from spelunking through watery caves of filthy water to a heavenly vista where farmers use scythes to tend the "Elysian Fields". Confronted by the halcyon scene of transcendent peace, Jack experiences a singular moment of profound sadness, finally aware that his evil indulgences have deprived him of any heavenly reward. As they approach their destination, Jack is confronted with a choice that speaks to his inherent narcissism. Verge knows that the choice will be irresistible to the vainglorious Jack, and the conclusion underscores that The House That Jack Built is fundamentally a morality tale--and that all devils eventually find their way home.
Recommended for: Fans of a startling character study of the worst kind of murderous psychopath--and also for fans of a sharp black comedy that is highly self-aware. By exploring themes like the indifferent brutality of nature versus the restraint of civilized society through the psychoanalysis of a murderer, The House That Jack Built might have been subtitled as "A Portrait of the Artist as a Serial Killer".