The House that Jack Built for…
(Author’s Note: while the following review centers more on the tactics filmmaker Lars Von Trier employs to engage and provoke the viewer, it also refers to certain plot points to elaborate on said tactics, which may constitute spoilers. I would recommend that anyone curious watch the film before proceeding.)
Excess, Destruction, and Bloodshed
The House that Jack Built contains the auto-critique that marked the narratives of Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist and Nymphomaniac. In this commentary on excess, destruction, and bloodshed as driving forces of art, he’s bold enough to include clips from his previous movies to equate himself – and the critical consensus of his work – with the titular killer (Matt Dillon). It figures that the blurred line between perception and reality is a key theme here.
In other words, Von Trier is operating in an assumed fail-safe mode: his work is impervious to – or, at the very least, indifferent toward – the judgment of critics and audiences alike. The House that Jack Built gained notoriety for the disgusted reaction of film-festival crowds (100 people walked out of its Cannes premiere), which all but guaranteed an audience of midnight-movie thrill-seekers outside of the Von Trier faithful.
But whereas someone like Eli Roth can’t build anything but backhanded social commentary from the grue of the Hostel films, Von Trier – for good and for ill – approaches his projects (like Jack’s desire to build the titular home) with an obsessive critical eye. He isn’t afraid to integrate humor into a serial killer tale, but also gives Jack a literal Virgil (anglicized “Verge”) to guide him through the recollections of several of his most noteworthy “incidents.”
The connotations of that word play into Von Trier’s – and, by default, the viewer’s – alignment with Jack’s sociopathic detachment: instead of “murder” or “kill,” incident becomes the equivalent of the aftermath of a gory car crash – you can’t help but slow down and take in the images of carnage. Something that becomes an accepted part of the fabric of the universe, so long as it doesn’t happen to us. The notion of “that-could-have-been-me” victimhood is sobering, but also carries its own death wish – the unspoken thrill of imagining what someone thought and felt in their final moments.
Visceral Tactics
The experience of seeing The House that Jack Built in a full theater back in November was interesting: the pre-film introduction by Dillon encouraged viewers to “laugh” or “scream”; Von Trier followed up the sentiment by addressing the audience as “brave souls,” and capping it all with “never another Trump.” Through the first two “Incidents,” the audience reacted to nearly everything with a laugh; by the third, however, the laughs tapered, becoming sporadic…to non-existent. Von Trier is no stranger to messing with audience expectations, and employing visceral tactics as a gauge to reveal our own standing on the humanity spectrum. Verge (Bruno Ganz) is the critical voice deconstructing Jack’s pseudo-intellectual rationalizations of art and murder, though one imagines Von Trier toggling between both perspectives – never fully condemning; but never in full agreement, either. It’s appropriately maddening.
Observe how, in “Incident 4,” the director lingers on the breasts of a young woman (Riley Keough) who Jack patronizingly calls “Simple.” At this point in the film, a certain degree of exhaustion has settled in, and the audience is anticipating, with dread, the inevitable outcome (death is on the way, but the form death will take is always a nasty surprise). While Von Trier’s camera seems to frame the woman’s chest in a clueless manner – like a horror amateur with prurient intentions – the trick of this sequence is in draining any erotic thrill from the proceedings. Furthermore, it also contains an echo of Von Trier’s Trump-referencing intro: as Jack encourages Simple to scream for help in her skid-row apartment, she’s greeted with silence from “people who don’t give a shit.”
As a narrative construct, “Jack” is designed to throw the viewer’s perception into doubt at every turn. During “Incident 2,” there is a brilliant back and forth between Dillon and his victim-to-be (Siobhan Fallon Hogan), which paints him as a pathological liar – note the way he piles one falsehood on top of another, yet still manages to ingratiate himself to her. If this scene is most reminiscent of John McNaughton’s Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, then the abstract, increasingly surrealistic excesses of later events venture into Jörg Buttgereit and David Lynch territory.
In fact, an accurate summation of Jack would be, “if David Foster Wallace wrote Henry.”
Blunt Force Trauma
But perhaps the most blatant announcement of intent is during “Incident 1,” where a stranded motorist (Uma Thurman) enlists Jack for a ride to a local garage. This serves as a one-sided origin story in which the motorist improbably spends the ride there and back enthusiastically deconstructing the clichés of the naïve hitchhiker taking a ride from a stranger, and making rhetorical statements grounded in the pop psychology of serial killer lore, all while Von Trier offers close-ups of a damaged, red-handled jack between the driver and passenger seats. Before Jack beats the motorist’s head in proper, the viewer has been subjected to the blunt-force trauma of the filmmaker’s overt symbolism and philosophizing, and Jack’s own pathological-liar status.
Von Trier creates works that are fraught with slippery slopes and shock-value provocation, and goes to great lengths to ensure – especially in the case of The House that Jack Built – that the atrocities on display are given an impartial counterpoint. But the presence of Verge only further muddies the waters, and leaves the viewer with more questions than answers. It’s an intimidating film to approach, and ultimately doesn’t come out the other end with any sense of exhilaration or triumph.
Such is life. Such is art. All is bullshit. This is me, throwing up my hands and saying, “well done, Lars, I give up! You win!”
4 out of 5 stars
(The House That Jack Built is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.)
The Plot Sickens: Check out Jonny Numb’s review of Like Me!
Crash Analysis Support Team
Jonny Numb
Jonny Numb (aka Jonathan Weidler) is far from a social-media celebrity, but his mom thinks he’s cool. His morally questionable tactics for gaining attention can be found on full display on Twitter and Letterboxd @JonnyNumb. He also co-hosts THE LAST KNOCK podcast with Billy Crash.
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(The House that Jack Built still from Amazon.)