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Rating: "The House That Jack Built" is a 2018 film written and directed by Lars Von Trier and starring Matt Dillon.
The talented and controversial Danish director tackles a rather ambitious and challenging film, venturing into the horror genre.
Matt Dillon plays Jack, an architect-engineer obsessed with the idea of building a house he designed, obsessed with cleanliness, obsessed with murders. Jack is a serial killer. A rather peculiar serial killer.
We will follow, in every sense, Jack's descent into the inferno over the 152-minute runtime of the film. We will witness his evil exploits in a crescendo of violence and rawness uncommon even in the horror genre.
The film is structured in two aspects. One concerns Jack's life, how he ensnares his victims, how he kills them, why he kills them. This part is, if you will, the "action" part of the film, and I found it truly superb. LVT's directorial technique is very interesting. The camera often shakes, enhancing the sense of discomfort and danger, foreshadowing the explosion of violence, often in broad daylight. The attention to details, the crescendo of tension, emphasized by the dialogues between Jack and the victim before the massacre, the skewed framing. All contribute to achieving an oppressive and unhealthy atmosphere.
The second aspect that characterizes and outlines the film structure concerns Jack's mind, his thoughts, his interiority, his "mission." This second aspect, which alternates with some regularity, also in terms of timing, compared to the action part, moves the film toward decidedly auteur territory. A "capish-horror," therefore, that shows its intents precisely in the unraveling of the tangled web that constitutes Jack's psyche. In an ideal dialogue with his conscience, played by a metaphorical Virgil, Jack illustrates and justifies his misdeeds as he claims the murders are genuine works of art (still life? Ahah). In summary, this part of the film, which, I repeat, in terms of timing is not inferior to the "action" part, aims to lead us into the tormented psyche of this infernal serial killer, who struggles quite a bit, in terms of dialectic, to assert his reasons. Murder as a work of art, then, an engineering work, akin to his inclinations, aimed at fixing in time a dead and frozen body that once represented life but, in the stillness of a work of art, will be alive forever. His conscience, however, while well-disposed to listen to his reasons, seems to disagree with him completely. The journey into Jack's consciousness also utilizes repeated schematics (Jack leaning on the car hood with white placards in hand, the inserts of pianist Glenn Gould on an old black and white film, rapid flashbacks of a young Jack shown through faded images presented by an old projector).
The constant alternation of the two parts, and the abrupt change of style regarding the shooting of the sequences, gives a disjointed tone to the film, making it difficult to watch, especially spread along a considerable length. The decision not to resort to special effects, scenography, the intentional absence of lights and a soundtrack, makes the film even rougher, with an almost documentary-like cut.
If one knows a little about philosophy, the thoughts of Lars Von Trier, one does not struggle to notice in Jack typical aspects of LVT's character. His misogyny (Jack says women are more "easy" to kill, more cooperative, almost always nagging, often stupid). His passion for Teutonic architecture during the world wars period, his being a tad filo-Nazi... Needless to say, the film has divided critics and audiences from the start, both for its gory content and its rather uncomfortable philosophical messages.
An honorable mention for an extraordinary Matt Dillon, who bears the entire weight of the film on his shoulders, portraying an indecipherable, determined, and elusive serial killer.
And so, like Jack, I too experience my crisis of conscience, fortunately for less tragic and morbid aspects. A crisis dictated by my two souls, one vulgar, the other capish. Indeed, I really liked this film, despite my more rustic side protesting quite a bit, especially during Jack's long mental musings, the "boring" parts of the film that are not gratuitous but rather instructive and almost necessary to convey Jack's message through his murders.
KATABASIS!
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