The House that Jack Built
starring Matt Dillon, Bruno Ganz, Uma Thurman, Siobhan Fallon Hogan, Sofie Brabol, Riley Deough and Jeremy Davies
written and directed by Lars von Trier
Rating: ♦♦♦♦◊
The story follows Jack, a serial killer with some artistic disposition, over the course of twelve years in the 1970s and 80s in the US state of Washington. It depicts the murders that develop Jack as a serial killer through five "Incidents" and an epilogue. Throughout the film, he has side conversations with Verge in between the depictions of the incidents, most of which revolve around discussion of art, philosophy, ethics or Jack's view of the world. After a time, I realized that “Verge” was the Roman poet Virgil, and that the film was somewhat based on Dante’s Inferno, in which Virgil guides Dante through the Underworld. I picked up on it because I read The Divine Comedy in university, but I wonder how many people today - young and otherwise - would recognize that, need to have it explained to them, or even care if it was?
Jack is an engineer. He is developing a rural property for himself and he continually designs, builds, then destroys, re-designs and re-builds his home, vying for the perfect house. Jack also owns an urban property with a walk-in freezer - a functioning large meat freezer. In his account of various murderous incidents to Verge, Jack describes turning to murder for seemingly meaningless, mundane reasons - mere crimes of opportunity, or to confirm his own existence through outward-directed violence. Furthermore, Jack is kind of a quiet, loner, isolated type. All of which combine to let him and his crimes go undetected. As one incident leads to another, Jack’s crimes become increasingly outrageous, bizarre and evil. And his exposition with Verge polished his character as cold and pathological. That’s why I made the Inferno connection, I think.
Jack eventually abandons his house-building project in the countryside. Instead, he uses the accumulated corpses that he keeps in his meat freezer to build a grotesque house of dead bodies. As the police begin to investigate him and close in to arrest, Verge leads Jack into the Underworld through a sewer vent in the floor of the freezer, beneath his corpse house.
The film didn’t do well at the box office - I think it lost money - but I thought it was an ambitious, provocative, technically proficient and artsy movie.
I didn’t like Matt Dillon as a young actor, but now in middle age I appreciate him much more.