Lars von Trier is the last filmmaker on Earth I'd want to meet in person. He seems like a truly horrible person based on his movies. Based on his personal life, he might have molested one of his actresses, is rumored to be an awful director to work with, and was enough of an edgelord that he claimed to be a Nazi. Maybe he's nicer in real life. His movies show a nihilistic, disgusting, sexist, arrogant worldview - which still gets him critically acclaimed. I believe he's at 50% a troll, which the last four years have shown us is no better or very different from sincerity.
To my irritation, Lars von Trier has never made an uninteresting movie. The man isn't lazy and works hard on his art. I imagine if he was less of a piece of shit he would make much better movies. "Piece of shit" is the public persona he has crafted and wants, I don't feel bad calling him that. If he's reading, I'm sure he's fine with it. Still, I have to respect the guy as a director. Nobody else is making movies like this. The world would be a less rich place without him.
The House That Jack Built is Von Trier's newest movie, coming out in 2018. It is a story about a psychopath mass-murderer, Jack (Matt Dillon), who believes his grotesque sins are actually an artistic statement. He is not just a murderer, he's a murderer auteur. We watch his recollections of his life while Jack is already in Hell. Jack discusses his sins with his guide through the Underworld, the poet Virgil (Bruno Ganz in his last role). That's "Verge" for short. No matter how beautiful his art, Verge is still going to take Jack to his ultimate fate with the rest of the damned.
Therefore this movie is Dante's Inferno meets American Psycho. Jack has five stories to tell about what he believes are his five greatest masterworks. The House That Jack Built juxtaposes its graphic, deeply disturbing violence with long slideshows of various philosophical topics. No matter how pretentious Jack gets with his Powerpoint presentations, the shocking acts between will always wake you back up. While Jack murders one his girlfriends and her two sons, he tells Verge about the ethics of hunting. He goes into the art of taxidermy while turning a dead boy's face into a ghastly bloody smile. This movie is tedious freshmen-level art lecture meets unfathomable nightmare.
Now, one of the reasons I don't like Von Trier is that The House That Jack Built is really about one thing: Von Trier. This movie has roughly the same structure as his previous movie, Nymphomaniac, but instead of impulsive sex we now have poor Riley Keough's breasts being mutilated. (One of her breasts becomes a wallet.) As gross as it is, Jack is Von Trier. These murders reflect the director's movies and all the grotesque shit he filled them with.
Von Trier is not even subtle about it. Late in the movie Jack babbles about art while a montage plays of all his previous movies. Jack has incoherent misogynist rants while openly admiring Nazis. This is Von Trier playing up his worst public persona and throwing it back in our faces ten times more extreme.
Verge is not convinced that rot and decay can be meaningful subjects for art. But Verge is a strawman Von Trier created to lose an argument as a stand-in for his critics. The House That Jack Built is basically any Taylor Swift song where she rails against her haters. Only Uma Thermon gets her face smashed inward.
Weirdly enough, I like The House That Jack Built. It is a movie I could not recommend to another person without them believing I was just as deranged as Jack/Von Trier. I do not want to watch this movie again. This is very unpleasant stuff, no matter how well-made. (Matt Dillon is really great in this movie.) For more though, what saves this rickety House, is that there is ultimately a cosmic justice. Jack opens the movie in Hell and he belongs there. I do not recommend murdering people as a form of artistic expression. But movies about murdering, sure. You can do that handsomely and artfully. You can find truth in that.
Hell in this universe has a low humming ring. That's the sound of the damned, all screaming together echoing up from hundreds of miles deep into the endless fire. Maybe Lars von Trier does not deserve to go to there. But final judgment on the man belongs to a higher power than myself.
Next Time: Jason X (2001). SPACE JASON.
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