Even without cognitive film theory, film is not just what is happening on the screen. The film integrates the perception of expression and the expression of perception (Sobchack, 1992), and the viewer is involved. So my reviews inevitably lead to the very personal aspects of watching a movie. I was watching in Copenhagen, and the companion was P.
In fact, only ten minutes after the opening, I realized the absolute existence of Von Trier: the mistress of the second incident asked Jack's official title, Jack replied "We are not at liberty to discuss that" . This can of course be considered a characterization, but the provocation of this sentence is too von Trier-like, as if he is standing in front of me mocking liberty. Jack's complaint about humiliating more directly declares his presence. As a consequence, I no longer focus on Jack's psychology or motivation.
Then, when I heard the questioner's name was Vege, I realized the movie's connection to The Divine Comedy, and the next thought was: So Jack is dead as a narrator. It's only a possibility, of course, but the consequence of that possibility is that my perspective has changed: Jack said that he picked five events randomly, so it doesn't really matter what happened to those five events . The characters and the plot are just structural elements, like the set, the frame—this film is Von Trier's architecture.
Yes, while Von Trier (like every director) needs to set characters and events to emotionally introduce the audience into his audiovisual world, his buildings stand on a level of form and abstraction. After clarifying this point, there will be no interpretation and preaching that only deal with the text from the story level, such as "the killer repeatedly builds houses to recast the personality to no avail".
The presentation of the five events is not only a review of Jack's life, but the narration makes it a construction. Not only are these images of dubious authenticity at the narrative level (of course, at the ontological level, all images are false), their fusion with historical images is even more comical. The chatter of the woman (Uma Thurman) at the beginning of the film may be just a malicious projection of Jack's heart, the stupidity of the police, and the indifference of the neighbors may just be Jack's relish to add a little spice to the story - although Vigie has Tell him there are no stories I haven't heard. When Jack moved the body back to the scene to take a satisfactory photo, Jack, who was moving with the body on his back in the big panorama, was like a comedian, seen by the neighbors, and disappeared. The screams of Jack's lover and the silence of the entire city could be reverie. They provoke the audience: my (Jack) story (Von Trier's creation) is crazy, but you irresistibly walked into my world and shared my pain and malice, even pleasure.
Far from being a childish response to the Cannes scandal, the introduction of the grandiose Nazi imagery adds a historical dimension to the film, and these histories are just stories constructed for various purposes that carry the film beyond the fourth. Face the wall and become a cross-media artwork. When I began to look forward to Stalin, to the image of the dictator in the Western vision that I was familiar with, to enter the ranks, my perception and expression participated in the construction of this artwork.
The pseudo-documentary effect brought by the charming handheld photography, the visual metonymy of a certain concept/mood (such as the recurring fragment of playing the piano) is just a collage, such as the heavenly bell at the end of "Breaking the Waves", it is a collage. Von Trier never played tricks. He needs them, just as Jack builds a house, drawing and building it out of wood. But just as Jack was about to pull the trigger, the voice came: what about your house? He had to use corpses one by one to build the house out of flesh and blood.
When the house popped up, I gasped - I said to P, How much has he suffered to come up with such a house. In my experience, "The house Jack Built" actually embodies not Jack's philosophy, nor the victims, but Von Trier's pain and art as a speech Impossible. Von Trier spends five chapters trying to build, then admits it's impossible, and Jack's philosophical sermons on art are silenced before the House of Flesh. This is not the freewheeling philosophical discussion in Godard's "As You Like It," or the classical philosophical approach in which Socrates asks young people questions in the market place and then keeps asking them, but Nietzsche's cry with a horse in his arms. The 'philosophical' and the moment when it can no longer be 'philosophical' is Von Trier's hysterical expression of the impossibility of speech. He's creating, he's standing on top of the ruins of past works that make up his "Jack's House of Flesh", perhaps giving him a moment of solace.
At this moment, the malice and provocation that filled the whole film quietly disappeared. Although it was ridiculous, Feng Trier seemed to be just a vulnerable child. Hellwalking is by no means superfluous. It is not only a natural surge of emotion and momentum created by the film before, but this journey of "the poor and the yellow spring" has undertaken the fragile node marked by the House of Flesh, where Before, Von Trier was the Joe in "Female Addict", determined to pull the trigger and go into the dark. Falling into hell is not "Chang'e should regret stealing the elixir," or "even though she has died nine times, she still has no regrets," but rather confusion and nothingness in confusion. Jack is still a human being, and as Weegee says, "a lot of people" that a lot of people have tried, not special. He (Von Trier) dashes from left to right, to try that art against nothingness, but as in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the door to the past is not only locked, but decayed, eternally restored Return points to the impossible (if the proposition of eternal return is false, the past cannot be redeemed), and this nothingness in the world of images cannot pass through sexual desire ("The Female Addict") or the desire for destruction ("This Room Was Made by Me"). ") to solve it, and can't find a way out of the video world. Of course Jack would choose to climb, and of course he would not repent. This gesture must be frozen in the raging lava flow of hell, but Von Trier was still alive and facing trivialities. He also inquires again and again with art, pointing to the impossible. When people are glad that Von Trier finally returned to Cannes, it was actually Von Trier in their hearts who returned to Cannes, the talented and mighty Von Trier. Under the house of flesh and blood was Feng Trier, and Jack covered his hands with blood.
In ancient Greece, sculpture was hewn out of material, before the work existed in the artist's mind. But Jack, he didn't know what that piece was like, he was so obsessed with "I made it" that this room became impossible.
View more about The House That Jack Built reviews
