Danish director Lars von Trier’s scabrous and controversial “The House That Jack Built” screened this week in scattered cities around the country—IFC Films touting a one-night-only screening of the director’s cut version of the film, which in and of itself could be its own controversy once fans who rushed to pay for tickets realize von Trier’s cut is all of reportedly 80 seconds longer (representatives for IFC Films would not comment). And if Twitter is any indication, the film, which was utterly savaged by appalled critics at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, including our own scathing F-grade review by Jessica Kiang, received a somewhat warmer reception here in the U.S. (read into that how you will). Before the screening, von Trier himself delivered a video message to audiences warning them to brace themselves for the film. “Good Luck,” he said in his final statement. “And remember, never another Trump.”
READ MORE: Lars Von Trier’s ‘The House That Jack Built’ Is Repulsive, Toxic Trash [Cannes Review]
Starring Matt Dillon as a cold, unfeeling sociopathic serial killer who sadistically murders (mostly women) at random, the film is something of a didactic arthouse experiment wherein the titular Jack (Dillon) recalls his sins in a voice-over conversation with Virgil (Bruno Ganz, who spends most of the picture off-screen) aka, the guide to hell in Dante’s Inferno. Jack walks “Verge,” as he calls him, through five seemingly random murder-spree incidents that make for five chapters in the movie (including a Hieronymus Bosch hellscape-like epilogue) that von Trier visualizes for the audience. Through these five chapters, Jack reveals who he is, at least superficially: an agitated psychopath who suffers from acute OCD and gives his murderous sobriquet of “Mr. Sophistication.” He’s also deeply unsatisfied on an existential level—a creatively frustrated architect and engineer who keeps attempting to build a house, but midway through the construction, tears it all down in agitation and self-hatred.
Which is the key to understanding von Trier’s picture, though in some regards it’s not that subtle. “The House That Jack Built” is desperate for psychoanalysis and nearly dares you to attempt your diagnosis. This disastrous creation is something the author himself wrought.
During the Q&A afterward, Dillon relayed to the audience that von Trier told him that the character of Jack was “the character that is closest to me” in real life which is disturbing if the director is comparing himself to an utter sociopathic butcher, but what he’s talking about is the metaphoric subtext of the film.
The picture is largely an extremely ambitious self-critique. “The House That Jack Built” is a loathing self-portrait of an artist who believes he is a fraud and a failure because he lacks empathy and thus is incapable of tapping into the human condition that is capable of creating true, lasting, meaningful art. It’s Lars’ self-incrimination comment on himself and how he feels about his work as an artist, and a bit of a sad cry for help.
Dillion echoed this sentiment almost word for word. “It’s not just a story about a serial killer,” the actor said. “It’s the story of a failed artist. In a lot of ways, it’s an allegory for that. And I think he’s a failed artist is because he lacks empathy and that’s something you need if you’re going to be a creative person.” Dillon might have been talking about his character, Jack, but he might as well have been talking about his director whom he described as an “honorable man” who always did what he said he would on set and with the film.
If you’ve seen and heard from Lars von Trier lately, you know he’s not doing well, still struggling with his recovery from alcohol addiction and has himself said he’s in poor mental health (he fell off the wagon during the making of the film). He’s grappled with addiction, depression, and has often wondered aloud whether he has something of value to say or something to say at all (at one point he threatened to quit making movies).
In one of his very few on-camera interviews from Cannes this year, the director looked alarmingly frail, and suggested whatever followed ‘Jack,’ would be it would be more modest, smaller and perhaps purposefully less provocative. He said, “I was just full of anxieties and alcohol [during the filming of ‘The House That Jack Built’]. So this is why I can’t really face making a film, at least not immediately.”
Dillon said at one point he started getting cold feet and became nervous about what he was starring in. He recalled asking Bruno Ganz about the movie because he had seen a mostly finished cut before Dillon had. “‘Well, how did it look?’,” he recalled asking his co-star. “‘Well, it didn’t really look that real so it wasn’t that [disturbing],’ and I looked at Lars and I could see Lars was very troubled by that. He came up to me later and said, ‘No, no, Bruno was wrong. It’s very real and it’s very disturbing.'”
At 151 minutes (2.5 hours), “The House That Jack Built” is perhaps more tedious than it is shocking, as well as self-indulgent, repetitive and doesn’t earn its length. That said, it’s also quite repugnant in spots as well, von Trier, even in his sadness unable to refrain from not poking the beehive with a stick which we’ve seen time and time again in his career—a kind of bi-polar where sadness and depression manifests itself in a kind of gleefully wicked, mischievous boy provocations. “The House That Jack Built” is really no different, it’s deeply ponderous in its systematic reflections of inadequacy and self-contempt, but it lurches forward with pique in fits and starts as the blood of rage boils and then dissipates back into defeat. It’s frustrating, it’s self-pitying and disconcerting too, as clearly there’s an extremely fragile psyche at the center of it all. “The House That Jack Built” certainly won’t be for all audiences, but if there’s one thing to cautiously admire, perhaps even ever so tenuously, is how von Trier is confronting his many demons and self-flagellating personal issues through the only the only medium he understands: self-censuring and self-gratifying art. Let’s hope it delivers catharsis.
“The House That Jack Built,” the regular (but not so different), R-Rated cuts hits theaters and VOD on December 14.
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