If "Happy Lazzaro", which was shortlisted in the main competition unit of this year's Cannes Film Festival, belongs to audiences of all ages, then there may be only two types of audiences belonging to Lars von Trier's "This House Is Made By Me" , One is crazy and fascinated by it, and the other is swearing at it.
In his early years, Lars von Trier was famous at the three major film festivals with his "European Trilogy", but in 1995 he and three other Danish directors jointly issued the Dogma 95 manifesto, expressly opposing Hollywood The film aesthetics, but also the film to "real". Therefore, hand-held photography and close-ups of characters' faces have almost become his iconic lens language.
At the same time, the director himself is an excellent screenwriter and has participated in almost every script of his movie. Madness and ethics are intertwined, promiscuity and moral intercourse, ugliness and humanity are the same. These have jointly constructed the director’s many years of creation. Story jungle.
Lars von Trier's latest film "This House Is Made By Me", although this time is only a non-competitive screening unit at the Cannes Film Festival, it still continues the festival's Lars von Trier effect.
It is reported that during the Cannes screening process, more than 100 spectators chose to leave midway due to a realistic shooting of women and children. However, compared to 2009 "Antichrist" was booed by Cannes audiences, and in 2011, it was expelled by Cannes officials for inappropriate Nazi remarks. This time it was a good result. Of course, the director himself still dismissed this criticism.
In fact, compare the "Antichrist"'s violent orgasm and the female anti-orgasm's physical self-defeating, and the 360° no dead-angle sex exhibition in "The Female Addict", the creative purse made of breast material in "This House Is Made By Me" and The plot of the shooting is obviously nothing more than a mere illusion.
This is also one of the reasons why Lars von Trier makes people hate and love. He makes a lot of essays where ordinary people are ashamed of talking and expressing, making them rusty and ordinary. This extreme spectacle display runs through In the creation of Lars von Trier, the later the film, the more mad and insane.
If the three films "Idiot", "Breaking the Waves" and "Dancer in the Dark" constitute the "Conscience Trilogy" of Lars von Trier, then the new work "This House Is Made By Me" may become a "guilt" The beginning of the "trilogy".
Jack, the serial killer, played by Matt Dillon, ignores the law and treats murder as an art. After every murder, Jack will restore the crime scene to perfection, not to prevent police investigations, but to obsessive-compulsive disorder. And each victim will keep an iconic art photo for future commemoration.
Lars von Trier unscrupulously compared Jack’s regular and timed desire to kill to the length of a shadow that changes with distance under a street lamp; the most beautiful body art photos were taken through the cruel corpse; even in the brightly lit open corridor In, repeatedly moving the body can be so easy without being seen through. Behind this series of incredible and shocking is the director's own script experiment.
From "Breaking the Waves", Beth was ravaged to death due to his overly kindness, to the dogtown residents who were unreliable and difficult to save in "Dog Town", to "This House Is Made by Me" directly positioned the protagonist as a ruthless and cold-blooded The serial killer outlines the ethical but logically self-consistent side of evil humanity, and has become the director's endless narrative source. For this reason, it is easy for us to understand why Lars von Trier can speak up and defend it in Europe, which is so quiet about Nazi fascism.
In the five hunting scenes of the film "This House Is Made By Me", the victims in the first four episodes are all parents and children. In the dialogue between Virgil and Jack, Jack claimed that the reason for killing women was because he believed that public opinion was always directed towards men making mistakes, and women were always victims. Sympathy for disadvantaged groups, including women, seems to have become an idea that Lars von Trier is extremely annoying, so he directs Jack's butcher to point at stupid and greedy women. As a result, the director's value orientation of "misogyny" has also become a target of criticism from many audiences.
In the fifth shooting with an all-metal shell with one through five, the victim's choice also appeared black and Asian. From women and children to blacks and Asians, the gender and ethnic selection of the victims are in a binary opposition of the "other" status, while the perpetrators are adult white males. The male protagonist is obviously racist and male. The value preference of rightsism cannot but be evaded. It is inevitable that some people will question whether this is the director's real thoughts, we don't know.
Even von Trier’s world-renowned masterpieces, such as "Idiot", "Breaking the Waves", "Dog Town", "Dancer in the Dark", etc., regard female characters as the protagonists in the film, and even possess the redemptive spirit of suffering and suffering like Jesus Christ. , But they are still vassals of their husbands (Beth in "Break the Waves"), sons (Selma in the Darkness), and fathers (Grace in Dogtown). It seems that life is only for them or as a last resort. And live.
But if this is the case, it seems a bit different to us trying to understand Lars von Trier. A director who is naturally rebellious, a director who rebels against the world, and a director who breaks the rules must be poured cold water under the concepts or thoughts approved by the mainstream. So the less you want to see women and children being shot and killed, I want to show you a serious picture. The more you support the weaker race, the more I want to shoot them. This is the crazy Lars von Trier, and it is his fascination and even the magic.
Of course, just doing this is far from a crazy hoof. Lars von Trier also brings his own understanding of architecture, painting, history and art into the film, so that they interpret each other, form his own narrative logic, and produce a summary and transcendence of the original creation.
What makes people send countless "fuck" in a row is at the end of the chapter body structure of the film. The owner of the voiceover turned out to be Virgil in the Italian medieval poet Dante's Divine Comedy. This rational poet tried to find the criminal motive of Jack's serial murder, but found nothing.
At the end, Jack follows Virgil through hell and purgatory as depicted in the "Divine Comedy". In a rock-climbing and crossing the river, Jack fell into the abyss that he did not listen to Virgil's advice; just as Dante once imprisoned Epicureans and heretics on the sixth level of hell, which is the same abyss.
Lars von Trier is here to close the film, as if returning to "Breaking the Waves" in 1996, the moment Beth's recovered husband threw Beth's ashes into the sea on the boat, from the sky. There is a huge bell ringing in the church to wash away the sins and help others. For more than 20 years, Lars von Trier’s religious consciousness and basic beliefs have never changed.
Lars von Trier once said that among today's Danish directors, apart from Billy August (director of "Pell the Conqueror", Danish national treasure director), there is only himself. Although these words are arrogant, looking at the world of film directors, it is difficult to find works that are similar or imitated by Lars von Trier. He does enjoy a unique position in the world of film.
Author | Liu Zeke; Public Number | Seeing Death in Movies
Edit | Riding a Rooftop Boy; please indicate the source for reprinting
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