At the Cannes Film Festival - the first time since 2011 - the film Lars von Trier was shown. All these years, the Danish director, joked about sympathy for Hitler, was persona non grata at the festival. At the Trier film The House That Jack Built, the guests of the festival reacted no less keenly than the ill-fated joke: at the social premiere no less than a hundred people left the show. I, nevertheless, saw in the film about a serial killer a brilliant essay by the director about art lessons and their disastrous consequences.
A genius is needed in order for the viewer and critic not to relax. It would seem that the Cannes public was not accustomed to anything in order to surprise, annoy, or annoy her? What did the Cannes public not see from Lars von Trier, the creator of not only the beloved films "Breaking the Waves" and "Melancholia", but still the shocking "Idioterne", "Dancer in the Dark" and "Antichrist"? Judging by the reaction, it is simply impossible to get used to some things (and people). Critics are again choking, looking for epithets more outrageous. The spectators in horror flee from the hall. Someone has calculated that with the cherished premiere of the fraudulent premiere, the tickets for which could not be reached, at least a hundred of the faint-hearted deserted.
Trier could tell a lot about insulting feelings. In addition, about how he was expelled from the Cannes Film Festival for him for a silly joke about Hitler, for which he apologized immediately. In addition, how publicly shamed for the monstrous, in the opinion of reviewers, pictures. In addition, the fact that a film about a maniac who dismembers women one by one, told on behalf of a serial killer, in the autumnal feminism in 2018 is taken seriously as an insult.
"For years, I made films about good women; it's time to make a movie about an evil man", says Trier.
Fortunately, Trier is ready for a hard reception. He feels uneasy when he is praised - about Hitler, he blurted out on a wave of enthusiasm around Melancholia. In addition, when they hate, they rejoice, like a harmful teenager who has managed to annoy teachers. In addition, importantly, no one apologizes for anything. As, however, his hero Jack is an incredibly lucky villain, and by profession he is an engineer and an architect who cannot finish building his own house.
Matt Dillon finally found a director worthy of Francis Ford Coppola and Gus Van Sant, with whom he began his career, and played a role that exceeded any expectations. As is the case with Trier, all efforts have concentrated on one artist and character, but his work is a true masterpiece. In the interpretation of Trier and Dillon, Jack, with his smoothed hairstyle and undercurrent insanity in his eyes, is not an ordinary madman with a razor in his hand, but a tidy, scrupulous to tediousness, obsessed with purity and constantly immersed in self-analysis. A worthy heir to the "American psychopath" Patrick Bateman, he combined all the vices inherent in man, and only one virtue - an extraordinary mind. Each of his murders, he considers a work of art and proves it very convincingly.
Jack - self-portrait Trier. This becomes clear long before the director starts fondly flipping through footage from his previous films. In addition, from the three-minute short film "Études" here is a direct quote. When asked about his occupation, Jack, following Lars, concisely states: "I am killing". Then he kills.
Jack, like Trier, prefers to torment women. More precisely, like this: among his sixty victims, there are men, but talking about women is more pleasant and interesting for him. They are dedicated to four of the five "incidents" that the film is divided into. The director slyly connects the formally feminist idea of a man as an eternal rapist and a woman as his archetypal victim with sadistic descriptions of each crime, the details of which their author plunges with obvious pleasure.
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The number one victim (Uma Thurman) Jack met by chance on the road and killed him without even asking her name. The victim number two broke into the house. Another, unnumbered, just hit by a car on the way to work. However, on the victim number, three he managed to marry and even have children, and the victim number four seems to be sincerely in love, until he decided to cut off both her breasts with a kitchen knife. The grotesque catalog of torture includes cutting off a fluffy duck leg with a nipper (they say, this especially angered the discerning viewers who did not read in the final credits that the animals did not suffer during the shooting) and the mass murder with a single bullet. Jack works like a mower on the field - measuredly, passionlessly and methodically. It does not stop.
"The House That Jack Built" itself develops into a dilogy with no less defiant "Nymphomaniac." Her heroine Joe was the embodiment of sex, Jack - death embodied. That film was about Eros, this one is dedicated to Thanatos. In that, there were pornographic scenes, in this - scenes of extreme cruelty and violence, the so-called torture porn. In both, Trier proves himself a faithful heir to one of his idols, the Marquis de Sade.
Of course, the killer’s ironic confession with vivid illustrations — the operator Manuel Alberto Claro habitually alternates quasi-documentary spontaneity with spectacular shots — until the transition to kitsch — does not exhaust the content of the painting by Lars von Trier. It has an internal plot, set out in the off-screen dialogue of Jack with a mysterious interlocutor by the name of Verge. Thanks to him, lyrical and philosophical digressions appear in the picture, including animation inserts and numerous cultural as well as historical references. Trier calls this method "digressionism" - the art of digression. Painting: Botticelli and Courbet, Rembrandt and Munch, Gauguin and Klimt. Poetry: Blake and Goethe (interlocutors discover themselves under whose oak tree in Buchenwald). Architecture: Acropolis, Gothic cathedrals, Albert Speer. Music: Glenn Gould and David Bowie. With the last two geniuses and cranks, Trier relates himself and his hero especially actively.
Of all the songs Bowie, Trier chose "Fame" - an evil satirical anthem, sung along with John Lennon, the verdict of all celebrities. It is funny that imitating Bowie in his early youth, today Danish director has become David Bowie from the world of cinema. His individual films are criticized more than others are, but no one is trying to deny credibility. In addition, he laughs in response, attributing glory to his hero and voicing the composition of Bowie in which this hero drags a disfigured corpse behind his red van. Again goes unpunished.
Simply put, “The House That Jack Built” is a film about art and its disastrous consequences. Cinema is purely autobiographical. This is a deep, bitter, essentially subversive essay about the immorality of creativity and that it is impossible to discuss matters of good and evil seriously, taking the position of a moralist. Namely, critics of the film, hiding behind the theses on secondary, narcissism, bad taste Trier, occupy it.
From the point of view of the canons accepted in modern cinema, he is a brazen intruder. His film is a kind of "The Life of a Great Sinner." Just as the negatives of the photographs of his victims fascinate Jack, Trier carefully creates the negative of everything that is usually expected from the so-called "good films". He took good enough, now his task is to shoot terrifying, but this does not cease to be brilliant. Starting with "Antichrist", he does not stop.
The radical nature of the message is confirmed by the obviously odious references to Stalin, Mao and, of course, to Hitler. In the final, Trier sentences his hero (and therefore himself) to capital punishment. However, to force repentance cannot care. The artist does not repent. He can only endlessly break into the closed doors of his own subconscious - as in that jammed door in the freezer for corpses, which Jack cannot open. Like a door to a secret room from a fairy tale about Bluebeard - also, by the way, a serial maniac killed women. What is behind her? To learn, it is necessary to watch to the end.
https://youtu.be/c6DuLPGZIoQ[The House That Jack Built - Official US Trailer | HD | IFC Films](https://youtu.be/c6DuLPGZIoQ)
The epilogue "The House That Jack Built" is called "Katabasis". If you do not know the meaning of this word, let it be a surprise for you. At this moment, it finally becomes clear who Verge is. He is not only Verge, but Vergilius: among other things, the film also discusses Aeneid. Along with him, Jack in his red robe (his hood reminds of Dante's dress with a famous picture of Delacroix) will go on a long journey. Is it any wonder that the director invited Bruno Ganz, the famous angel from Wings of Desire and Hitler from Downfall, to play the role of Verge? That half-dead from fatigue and the doomed Führer, whom Lars von Trier dared to regret publicly at the ill-fated press conference several years ago. It turns out that Trier returned to Cannes not alone. Little inner Hitler is still with him. Apparently, they will not part even in the afterlife.
The illustrations are used in agreement with the Depositphotos photobank
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