![]() ![]() Von Trier wasn’t officially credited on The Idiots because that film was made following the Dogme 95 Manifesto, which he had created in 1995 with fellow Dane Thomas Vinterberg as an attempt to make a purer cinema, freed from the capitalist and technological corruption of studios. ![]() Each heroine finds herself in intractable situations with people who take advantage of her generosity with exponential cruelty. Von Trier’s “Golden Heart” trilogy-starting with Breaking the Waves in 1996 and continuing with The Idiots in 1998 and the musical Dancer in the Dark in 2000-derives its title from the saintly women each film centers on. This equation of shock + craftsmanship is also what von Trier has built his career upon: He could be said to have abused his status as an auteur filmmaker to implicitly legitimize the violence in his films, which is itself often perpetuated by men who justify their cruelty (often against female characters) with assured but inhumane rhetoric. Jack is evidently a bad guy: he tricks, tortures, and kills, mostly women, in often convoluted ways he calls his crimes “art,” enshrining them in photographs for the media. And because Lars isn’t just a provocateur, never one to shock his audience and distance himself from it with a sense of righteousness (hello, Michael Haneke), it is also his most bashful admission of guilt, fear, and regret as an artist-a major work reduced to a bothersome provocation by too many critics to count.Īnyone with even a minimal knowledge of von Trier’s cinema will make the connection between von Trier and Jack, the Ted Bundy–ish serial killer played by Matt Dillon, whose performance reveals an astonishing range and comic timing. The House That Jack Built is far from the first time that von Trier has sent his audience on a downward spiral into hell, but it is the film that best expresses his reasons for doing so. ![]() To his detractors, his fans, and all his spectators, von Trier says “close your eyes, relax, and let me take you to the scary places I know so well.” Yet the old man’s irritation also speaks for von Trier’s: the Danish director, now 62 years old, doesn’t guarantee answers and has seen things you people wouldn’t believe. The older man heard in The House That Jack Built soon warns his interlocutor Jack, who wishes to confess more about himself, “just don’t think you’re going to tell me anything I haven’t heard before.” There might be a hint of irony in the old man’s blasé attitude knowing the director’s confrontational and playful work, chances are that Jack’s tales and opinions at least will be fascinating, and probably outrageous. The effect in both of these sequences is unmistakably hypnotic. Slowly, von Trier draws in the viewer and makes him weary, calling back to the opening of his 1991 film Europa, in which Max von Sydow’s velvety tones take the viewer into a trance “still deeper into Europa,” while the repetitive rhythm of railroad tracks flashes on screen. Lars von Trier’s highly anticipated and already hotly debated new film, The House That Jack Built, begins with a black screen and a disembodied male voice saying, “Can I ask you something?” An older man, equally invisible, replies, “I can’t promise I’ll answer.” As we eavesdrop on this cryptic conversation, the darkness before our eyes seems to somehow grow deeper we have no choice but to focus solely on these unknown voices. ![]()
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