It’s a film that requires a twisted sense of humor and an iron stomach to even tolerate, never mind enjoy.īut to dismiss “Jack” out of hand in offense is not just to miss von Trier’s point, but to prove it. When Cannes finally welcomed von Trier back earlier this year, there were reports of outrage and audience members walking out in disgust when confronted with “Jack.” That’s understandable. It makes for some of the year’s most indelible cinematic imagery. In its final act, “Jack” takes a turn for the visually and existentially stunning, making literal the film’s long journey into hell. But as anyone who has suffered von Trier’s “Antichrist” (2009) knows, the Danish filmmaker has a gift for marrying horror with grace.
This might not seem an endeavor capable of elegance. It’s not just Jack having this conversation with Verge, it’s von Trier having this conversation with us. Throughout the film, Jack is engaged, in voiceover, in a sprawling conversation with an ethereal being named Verge (Bruno Ganz).Īs the horrors of Jack’s life play out on screen, the two ruminate on the nature of art, on the merits and limitations of destruction and love – lofty philosophical concepts that are parsed while blood splatters across the screen. The film is broken into five “incidents” over a 12-year-period, each a uniquely grisly murder that one-ups the horrors that preceded it. It’s a powerhouse performance that demands admiration for craft even as it repulses. One moment he’s vivisecting prey, the he’s next practicing facial expressions in the mirror to better convey human emotions, always with a wry, mocking undercurrent of disgust for humanity.
#The house that jack built serial
Serial killers are always sport for game actors, but Dillon really leans into the madness. Sophistication, a brilliant engineer, would-be architect and unhinged serial killer whose walk-in freezer is rapidly filling with corpses. That a film this abrasive works at all owes a major credit to Matt Dillon’s mesmerizing performance as Jack, aka Mr. “The House That Jack Built” is more than just an epic piece of cinematic trolling it’s von Trier taking a microscope to his creative process in all its obsessive ugliness, creating a sophisticated meta-commentary on his art and daring the audience not to be entertained by his extreme indulgence in all the predilections for which he’s been roundly criticized. Von Trier ("Dancer in the Dark," "Melancholia," "Nymphomaniac") is as unabashed a provocateur as ever, and that would be annoying if he weren’t such a damn fine filmmaker, too.
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