I heard talk of depictions of brutal child murder, debasement of corpses, and the Holocaust. Which is annoying, both because the movie is not actually all that shocking, and because my worry and sight-unseen revulsion are exactly what von Trier wants.
My empathy, I guess, only extends so far. To which you might say, who cares? The film is a vain, desperate plea to be seen and reacted to, a provocation whose gruesomeness becomes, by the end, banal.
Matt Dillon plays Jack, a serial killer doing his terrible work sometime in the early s, somewhere in America the film was obviously not shot in America. In stilted voice-over, Jack confers with an unseen man called Verge Bruno Ganz , a back-and-forth about art and awfulness that is mostly the filmmaker arguing with his critics and with himself.
But the metaphor here is lame. Von Trier is not a serial killer, or anything even close. Like any anonymous, shit-posting Internet troll, the film is keen to its ultimate insignificance. So all of his efforts to eject bile out of himself and onto usβwhich will make us finally get him, damn itβfall short. On his technical merits, von Trier is a talented filmmaker, and there are isolated moments in The House That Jack Built that are plenty effective.
He has been listening and absorbing, it seems, which is more than some hard-headed, wannabe-iconoclast men can say for themselves. Plenty of my colleagues liked this film, so maybe that affection was never lost. But therapy is contained and private. Archive Magazine. Save this story Save. Winnie Harlow. At the amfAR Cannes Gala. Richard Lawson Chief Critic. Richard Lawson is the chief critic at Vanity Fair, reviewing film, television, and theater.
