THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT

Denmark, 2018, 152 minutes, Colour.
Matt Dillon, Bruno Ganz, Uma Thurman, Siobhan Fallon Hogan, Sofie Grabel, Riley Keogh, Jeremy Davies, Jack Mc Kenzie, Ed Speleers, David Baillie, Emile Tholstrup,
Directed by Lars von Trier.

Writer-director, Lars von Trier, has encouraged controversy during his long career. And, controversy was raised with the present film, reports of audiences walking out.

It is clear that any audience can choose to see a film about a serial killer or not. If they make the choice, they can expect, at least, gruesome images. In fact, there are many gruesome images here, but not excessively gory (especially in comparison with the multiplicity of horror films in recent decades) not images that an audience who chooses to see the film would walk out of.

von Trier is trying to do something special in this portrait of a serial killer, an evil Everyman character, narcissistic and boastful, both shrewd and naive, misogynistic but not limiting his victims to women. And that something special is to invite the audience to 2 ½ hours of reflection on philosophy and art in the context of the life and the murders by a serial killer. In fact, and the art and the reflections are so interspersed throughout the film that they provide a substantial counterbalance to the gruesome images. One might wonder whether the audience who walked out of this film did not understand all the discussions, the meanings of the visuals and the music, or could not bother to work with them.

On the narrative level, there are five incidents in Jack’s murderous career, a driver with a car breakdown, a widow interested in insurance, a mother and two young children victims of hunting, a seductive young woman murdered in her apartment – and, in the fifth episode, a range of men, multi-ethnic, to be the target of an experiment with a full metal jacket bullet. There is also an epilogue, titled, Katabasis indicating downfall and death.

Matt Dillon is convincing in the central role, initially obsessively fastidious, OCD, but, gradually changing in appearance, feeling freer and becoming more unkempt. He has wanted to be an architect but is an engineer, building a model of a house, visiting the building site, building and then demolishing, a metaphor for his own life.

Throughout the film, there is a voice offscreen, a continued challenge to Jack about his behaviour, and response to his defending himself, a continued judgement on Jack – so that the audience is in no doubt about the film’s moral perspective on serial killing. The voice is referred to as Verge (Bruno Ganz) who eventually appears at the end, the classic Roman author, Vergil, – and Dante’s guide to the inferno in The Divine Comedy. One can hear commentators declaring von Trier as pretentious, in likening himself to Vergil – but, on reflection, this is obviously a 21st-century visual version of The Inferno, especially in its culmination.

And there are so many art references as well as discussions about the nature of art, creating art, Jack interpreting his murderous work as artistic. There are sequences with Glenn Gould playing the piano. There are visuals of architectural frameworks, Gothic cathedrals, the screen filled with a page of letters, an animation allegory about light and shadows for pleasure and pain, a wide range of paintings, especially classical, visuals by William Blake of God, of the Lamb of the Tiger, and a discussion about the symbolisms of innocence and violence.

Which means then that this is no ordinary serial killer thriller. Rather, it is a visualisation of a contemporary phenomenon of men who kill. It is also an invitation to a much wider range of reflection on being human, on good and evil, on depth and banality, and illustration of this reflection by all the arts. The film is a visual and verbal portrait, and visual and verbal analysis.

1. Impact of the film, its reputation, controversies, portrait of a serial killer, violence, terror/horror

2. The career of Lars von Trier? Ambitions? Controversies? Visuals? Themes?

3. The setting, the USA the 1970s, filmed in Scandinavia? Images of towns, streets, homes, the warehouse and the freezer, the countryside, the roads, forests, locations for hunting, apartments? The transition at the end to the world of the imagination – to the inferno?

4. The musical score, the range of songs, classical music, Glenn Gould and the excerpts? The finale and Hit the road, Jack?

5. The title, the house has an image of Jack, Jack as an Everyman of evil, Jack as engineer, wanting to be architect, the model for the house, his building and design, the real house, the land and landscapes, the framework, the bricks – his contemplation, the demolition and rebuilding? This serving as a metaphor for himself? Building and destroying?

6. The narrative, Jack’s story and communicating it to the audience? The offscreen response of Verge? Verge and his critique, moral judgements? Jack and his defence? The overtones of classic Vergil, the later comments on writing the Aeneid? Audiences making the connection with Dante and The Divine Comedy and the Inferno?

7. Jack, a visual portrait, verbal portrait? Visual analysis, verbal analysis?

8. The flashbacks, Jack as a boy, orphan, needing a family, in the reeds, hide and seek, pursuit, escape? The close-ups? His interior attitudes? Behaviour?

9. Jack posing with the cards, the placards, the verbal descriptions of his psychological state and behaviour, tossing them aside? Yet in claiming to be Mr Sophistication – and this reputation with the media?

10. Audience response to stories of serial killers, factual reporting, myths, urban legends? Uma Thurman as the first lady? Her comments on serial killers, descriptions, taunting Jack, his appearance, apologies? And her sudden death? The recurring of the images?

11. The killings, the comment on their being gruesome, but comparatively less gory than many other films? The counterbalancing of the visual images of art, music? Ideas and discussions?

12. The misogyny, the female victims, the family victims, the international group, men? The theorising about misogyny, Vergil asking about his female victims and his thinking them less worthy? His musings about men, women and the way that they were born, expectations?


13. Jack, and his changing throughout the duration of his serial killings? The initial neatness, OCD, cleanliness? The second killing, his imagining bloodstains, his continual returning and checking? Even risking discovery? His later decline, the moustache and stubble out hunting, more dishevelled in his erotic behaviour with the fourth woman? Gradually more unkempt?

14. The intellectual and artistic content of the film and its being spread throughout the film? Vergil and his discussions? The visual arts, the range of paintings, the architecture and the visual illustrations of buildings and framework, the Gothic cathedrals? Classic paintings, the baroque? Glenn Gould and the recurring music? The animation and the discussion about movement, the lights, shadows ahead, shatters behind – and images of pleasure and pain? Light and shadow, the image of the eclipse? Photography and the nature of the negative?

15. The verbal comparisons, the focus on Blake, his visual art, his poetry, the symbols of the Lamb and innocence, the Tiger and cruelty?

16. Verge, voice offscreen, the commentary, the challenge, judgements, accompanying Jack and his career? The final appearance, the conversations, downfall and katabasis, Jack defending himself? Explanations, boasts? Jack having to make the final choices, the decision to go into the Inferno, scale the wall, his falling to hell? Hubris leading to nemesis?

17. Chapters and the incidents and the epilogue?

18. The first incident, the woman and the car breakdown, not able to wield the jack, stopping Jack, the lift, tough talk, serial killers, the repairs, forcing him to drive her back, the continued taunts, his hitting her? Burying her? Near the state line and the car able to be seen?

19. The second incident, the widow in the house, Jack’s performance, the discussions about the police badge, claiming to be an insurance agent, testing her? Offering her more money? The entry, the cup of tea, his attack, choking her, failure, the repetition? Stabbing her, the blood flow? His obsessive cleaning the house? Watching, the police arriving, his interfering and offering to contribute to the case? Continually rechecking about the blood, his imagining there was more blood? Taking the corpse, dragging it through the road, the blood on the road, the rain, his considering it a blessing and providential?

20. The third episode, the family, his being a hunter, looking rougher, the discussions, with the two boys and their moods, explaining hunting and then saying it was cruel? The nature of culling and references to ethnic cleansing? Observing the deer, the rifles, the tower, shooting at the targets? His killing the boys, the concerned mother, shooting her, in the ditch and shooting her again? After the picnic episode with the pie and his forcing her to feed the dead boys? The posing, the framework of the dead crows and the dead people? The taxidermy, the bodies, posing them?

21. Jack and his interest in photography, developing the photos, the reflections on light and the negatives and the images, going back to the second woman, the pictures on the wall, continued photography?

22. The fourth incident, Jack and his erotic behaviour, the woman in the room, his considering her a simpleton, the interchanges, his plans, the phones, cutting the chords? Urging her to scream, his own screaming? The marker on her breasts? Making her choose a knife? His choice and his praising her for it? The terror? The cutting of the breast, making the cup, putting it on the car? The other breast later as a purse? The photos?

23. The fifth incident, the abduction of the African- American man, going into the freezer, the range of men, the ethnic range? Lining them up, the bullet to the heads, the experiment on the eastern front? The issue of the full metal jacket, his going to the store, the arguments with the seller, his phoning the police? Going to the old man, the interactions, the taunts – and his stabbing him? Getting the bullet, the return to the men? The intervention of the police?

24. Vergil, appearing, revealed? The role of the police? Vergil and his room, the discussions? Issues of sin and crime? The hole in the ground, the water? The buzzing sound and Virgil’s explanation, the increasing sound of pain as they approached hell? The barge, the posed men? The ladders into the cavern, the waters, the red atmosphere?

25. Jack and his discussions with Vergil, the concept of icons? The trumpets of Jericho, the visuals of the Stuka and its flights, dropping bombs, its sound during World War II? The images of the 20th century dictators, the visualising of them? Vergil and his image of Buchenwald, the oak tree, the tree under which Goethe sat and wrote? The ironies of good and evil in the world?

26. Jack and his falling into hell – and the irony of the final song during the credits, the irony of the lyrics after what the audience had seen?

27. Visual portrait, visual analysis, verbal portrait, verbal analysis?