The House that Jack Built (2018)
Country: DK/FR/SV/GER/BEL/TUN
Technical: col/2.39:1 152m
Director: Lars von Trier
Cast: Matt Dillon, Bruno Ganz, Uma Thurman, Sofie Gråbøl, Riley Keough
Synopsis:
A serial killer settles his account with an angel of death before he is consigned to Hell.
Review:
Though sharing a confessional setting with its predecessor, the Danish enfant terrible's meditation on cruelty is surer of foot than his diptych on nymphomania, perhaps because it is closer to his prime field of expertise. The concepts of evil and damnation are again present, with their suggestions of religious belief. The protagonist's apparent ability to continue his killing spree with impunity leads not, as in Man Bites Dog, to a satire on contemporary society, but to the surprise retribution of an obsolete deity. The confession, which riffs on a number of commonplaces surrounding the serial killer (narcissism, lack of empathy, obsessive compulsive disorder), and delivers the randomly chosen 'incidents' from his body of work as so many exhibits for self-indictment, is thus a typically authorial distancing device. Where that leaves us, aside from the masterly display of technique and wilful provocation we have come to expect, is a moot question. A gallery of grotesquerie for voyeuristic sadists, or an affirmation of the power of cinema to visit the darkest corners of the human psyche?
Country: DK/FR/SV/GER/BEL/TUN
Technical: col/2.39:1 152m
Director: Lars von Trier
Cast: Matt Dillon, Bruno Ganz, Uma Thurman, Sofie Gråbøl, Riley Keough
Synopsis:
A serial killer settles his account with an angel of death before he is consigned to Hell.
Review:
Though sharing a confessional setting with its predecessor, the Danish enfant terrible's meditation on cruelty is surer of foot than his diptych on nymphomania, perhaps because it is closer to his prime field of expertise. The concepts of evil and damnation are again present, with their suggestions of religious belief. The protagonist's apparent ability to continue his killing spree with impunity leads not, as in Man Bites Dog, to a satire on contemporary society, but to the surprise retribution of an obsolete deity. The confession, which riffs on a number of commonplaces surrounding the serial killer (narcissism, lack of empathy, obsessive compulsive disorder), and delivers the randomly chosen 'incidents' from his body of work as so many exhibits for self-indictment, is thus a typically authorial distancing device. Where that leaves us, aside from the masterly display of technique and wilful provocation we have come to expect, is a moot question. A gallery of grotesquerie for voyeuristic sadists, or an affirmation of the power of cinema to visit the darkest corners of the human psyche?
Country: DK/FR/SV/GER/BEL/TUN
Technical: col/2.39:1 152m
Director: Lars von Trier
Cast: Matt Dillon, Bruno Ganz, Uma Thurman, Sofie Gråbøl, Riley Keough
Synopsis:
A serial killer settles his account with an angel of death before he is consigned to Hell.
Review:
Though sharing a confessional setting with its predecessor, the Danish enfant terrible's meditation on cruelty is surer of foot than his diptych on nymphomania, perhaps because it is closer to his prime field of expertise. The concepts of evil and damnation are again present, with their suggestions of religious belief. The protagonist's apparent ability to continue his killing spree with impunity leads not, as in Man Bites Dog, to a satire on contemporary society, but to the surprise retribution of an obsolete deity. The confession, which riffs on a number of commonplaces surrounding the serial killer (narcissism, lack of empathy, obsessive compulsive disorder), and delivers the randomly chosen 'incidents' from his body of work as so many exhibits for self-indictment, is thus a typically authorial distancing device. Where that leaves us, aside from the masterly display of technique and wilful provocation we have come to expect, is a moot question. A gallery of grotesquerie for voyeuristic sadists, or an affirmation of the power of cinema to visit the darkest corners of the human psyche?