The house that Jack built (film)

The story tells of Jack ( Matt Dillon ), a highly intelligent serial killer who has committed more than 60 serial murders over the course of 12 years. The film is divided into 5 incidents, in the interval between which Jack leads an off-screen dialogue with a certain Virge ( Bruno Ganz ) on the subject of Jack's philosophy, ethics and worldview.

1st Incident

Jack drives down the road in his van when he unexpectedly meets a woman ( Uma Thurman ), whose car broke down. She needs to fix a broken jack to replace the wheel. After a short conversation and joking that she should not be in Jack's van, because he might well be a serial killer, Jack agrees to take the woman to his friend mechanic, Sonny. He repairs the jack, but when they both (the girl and Jack) return to the car, the jack breaks again. A woman asks to return her to Sonny. Jack is trying to explain to the girl that he has so many things to do, but she stubbornly does not listen to him. During the trip, Jack does not stand up, takes the tire jack and kills the girl with it. Then he takes her body to an industrial freezer, purchased specifically for such cases.

2nd Incident

Jack knocks on the door of another woman ( Shivon Fallon ) and claims to be a policeman who can help her with her late husband's pension. The woman does not believe him, because she does not see his police badge. And then Jack comes up with a new legend that he is supposedly an insurance agent, but under the guise of a policeman walks home, collecting information for an insurance company. He deceives a woman by offering her insurance benefits, and when she lets Jack into the house, he strangles her. But the woman does not die right away, she regains consciousness, and Jack offers her some water with donuts in an attempt to make her suffocate. When this does not work, he again strangles the woman, and then pierces her heart with a knife. He plunges her body into a van, but due to an obsession with removing every surface in the house and wasting time, Jack attracts the attention of a passing policeman ( Edward Speliers ). By trick, Jack manages to get the policeman into the house, hide the body in the bushes (during the inspection of the van), and later retreat and, in a hurry, tying the woman's body to the bumper of the van, drag her to an industrial freezer. A trail left on the road by a corpse was soon washed away by a sudden downpour. This leads Jack to the idea of ​​giving himself the nickname "Mr. Sophistication."

3rd Incident

Jack goes hunting with a woman close to him ( Sophie Grobel ) and her two sons, Grumpy and George. First, he teaches the boys to shoot at targets with a shotgun from an observation tower, and the woman at this time is preparing food for a picnic. But later, when the children are with their mother on the ground, Jack begins to shoot at them with a sniper rifle. Soon, he kills both sons and forces the woman to feed the dead George pie. After this, Jack gives the woman time to hide; then it wounds her, follows the trail and finishes off, like a real hunter. In the end, Jack takes the body of Grumpy, her second son, and, using his knowledge in taxidermy, changes his eternally sad face to a grotesque smile.

4th incident

Jack comes home to Jacqueline ( Riley Kio ), a young girl whom she calls “The Silly Girl”, since she considers her not smart enough. He admits that he has killed sixty people at the moment and is the serial killer of Mr. Sophistication. At first, Jacqueline does not believe Jack and thinks that he is lying, but later he scares the girl, and she leaves. On the street, Jacqueline is trying to tell a policeman who is not far from her house that Jack is a murderer, but he does not believe her. In the end, Jacqueline comes back, where Jack ties her, cuts off both her breasts with a knife, and then kills. Jack puts one cut-off chest under the janitor of a police car, in which at that moment there is no one, and from another he makes a wallet.

5th incident

Jack kidnaps five people, binds them and kneels them in a row, tied their heads to the construction goats. He hopes to kill all five with one shot, but then he realizes that the bullet bought at Al's gun shop ( Jeremy Davis ) is not all-metal. Pedantic Jack is furious. He goes to Al, but he, under various pretexts, does not accept and does not exchange cartridges sold earlier. Then Jack goes to the old acquaintance Es Pi ( David Bailey ), who, however, also does not want to hear anything and threatens Jack with a revolver. Jack convinces him to lay down his arms, because they have known each other for a long time, and when Es Pi does this, he kills him with a knife. Having finally obtained the necessary all-metal bullet from Es Pi, Jack puts on his red coat and kills the policeman who arrived at the crime scene. Then he steals a police car, which he gets to the house with a freezer. There, Jack does not have enough space to precisely aim at his five victims, and he has to crack open the frozen door in the back of the freezer, which did not open before. Entering a previously locked room, Jack first sees Virge. He assumes that Jack has an unfinished business, because he never completed his house. Then Jack, using the bodies of the victims as material, builds a house of them. When he goes inside this house, he sees a hole in the floor. At that moment, the police arrived in time, burn the door outside and start shooting. Jack has no choice but to hide in the hole after Verge.

Epilogue: Katabasis

The epilogue is a direct reference to Dante 's Divine Comedy . Verge, like the guide Virgil, leads Jack to hell. He leads him to the very bottom, to the ninth circle of hell, where there is a bridge over a huge precipice. A passage on the other side of the bridge leads from hell, presumably to paradise, but the bridge itself is destroyed. Verge says that although he himself is very surprised by this, the seventh circle is intended for Jack, and here he took him away so that he knows what could be waiting for him, in response, Jack notices that you can cross to the other side along a steep rock passing to the side from the bridge. And although Verge warns him that no one has succeeded yet, but he cannot forbid him to do so, Jack climbs up the cliff. Verge shrugs off and Jack tries to cross over to the other side. Soon he fails and falls from a cliff down into a chasm of fire. The film ends with the music of “ Hit the Road Jack ” ( Rus. “Get out, Jack” ).

Initially, Lars von Trier developed the idea of ​​making a television series, but in February 2016 he announced that he would make a film. ^[6] In May 2016, after a thorough study of the life history of serial killers, von Trier completed the script. ^[7]

On November 2, 2016, von Trier announced that actor Matt Dillon would play a major role in the film ^[8] . Shortly afterwards, in February 2017, it was announced that Riley Kio and Sophie Groböl would also join the filming process ^[9] . In March 2017, it was announced that Uma Thurman would take part in the film ^[4] .

Filming started in March 2017 in Sweden and two months later they ended in Denmark ^{[1] [10]} . After filming in Copenhagen, the footage went to the studio of post-production and visual effects ^[11] . The rights to distribute the film belong to TrustNordisk ^[6] . The film was shot with the support of film companies in France , Germany , Sweden and Denmark ^[6] .

In March 2017, von Trier was negotiating the premiere of the film at the Cannes Film Festival , despite the fact that he had previously been declared persona non grata there ^[11] . According to some reports, von Trier was offered to show his film out of competition, but he refused ^[12] . At the same time, the general director of the film festival, Thierry Fremo, did not exclude the possibility of the appearance of the film von Trier in the program of the event ^[13] . As a result, on April 19, 2018, it was announced that the film will be screened at the Cannes Film Festival out of competition ^[14] .

In an interview with The Guardian, Lars von Trier said his film was inspired by Donald Trump : “The film praises the idea that life is an evil and heartless thing. This confirms the recent accession of homo trumpus, the Rat King ” ^[15] .

On May 14, 2018, the film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, it was shown outside the competition program ^[16] . In May 2017, the IFC Films film company acquired the rights to distribute the film in the United States. ^[17]

About a hundred spectators left the premiere at the Cannes Film Festival ^{[16] [18]} . Many viewers and critics agree that the film has a lot of unjustified cruelty over women and children ^[16] . Variety editor Ramin Setudeh wrote: “Watching the movie was one of the most unpleasant in my life” ^[19] . Despite the cruelty, after the end of the film, the audience applauded standing ^[20] .

On the Rotten Tomatoes website , the film has 57% positive reviews based on 126 reviews with an average rating of 5.9 out of 10 ^[21] . On Metacritic - 42 points out of 100 based on 29 reviews ^[22] .

• trustnordisk.com/film/2018-house-jack-built - the official website of the film