It’s been three weeks since I watched this film. The reason why I have not started writing is because I was considering whether to use this film as a special topic on Lars von Trier in "Amazing Record" (a serial that I will open soon). Part. On the other hand, I want to plan to watch it again and try to capture as many details as possible. Russ is one of my favorite directors, I can call it an idol. Regarding his works, I naturally hope to be able to carefully analyze and try to write in depth. So after procrastinating, I always felt that I had overlooked this point, and that point was beyond the scope of knowledge, so I hesitated and procrastinated for nearly a month.
During this period, there have been more and more film reviews of "This House Is Made By Me" online. Many people analyze it from the lens, the Divine Comedy, etc. Thinking about it now, in fact, I can also write an article briefly first, and I might as well dig some more when the "Exciting Appreciation Record" is written to him. When I walked out of the auditorium, like most people, I was deeply fascinated by the stylized photography and the ending paragraph of the "Divine Comedy".
To grasp the style of Lass’ works is quite simple: hand-held photography inherited from the "Dougma 95" movement; exquisite and upgraded shots since "Melancholia"; shooting propositions; chapter narrative structure; large-scale elements that are deviant; The myths between the individual, the collective, and the civilization are mixed; there are also the genre film techniques that are looming in the later period. But this time, the first thing we need to notice is that Russ abandoned the 22-year perspective of female roles and filmed a male drama.
Since the "European Trilogy", Russ has always focused on a female perspective ("True Boss" is an anomaly). Emily Watson in "Break the Waves", Podil Jorgensen in "Idiot", and later Bjork, Nicole Kidman, Ron Howard's daughter, and the ubiquitous Charlotte Gansbu. Through the female perspective, Lars not only explained these different women thoroughly, but also expressed a certain anti-secular theme through their loneliness and pain.
For Russ, women are the most precious existence in the world. Also because of status and identity, women can extend many different ways of expression-daughters, wives, mothers... These social/family roles make them more ethical than men to some extent. Criticism and reflection on secular ethics are the core elements in several of Lars' films. On the other hand, women often mean disadvantaged groups in society, and Lars really likes to challenge our intuition and common sense in the way of movies, so it is more appropriate to use women to tell.
These women are often not representative, but they are very unique and quite real. It's just that they are often ignored in reality or deliberately ignored. And Lars made these people burst into powerful energy in the movie, either terrifying, or sad, and there is always a halo of dying over their heads.
Such and such, in "This House Is Made By Me", it seems that it cannot be fully established. Matt Dillon plays Jack as a burly man. From his perspective, the power relationship is bound to change. However, this does not mean that the film no longer cares about women. From Uma Thurman to Riley Keough, each victim pointed to the center from a different angle—arrogant, stupid, and superficial. The woman in this film has become a different existence from before. With the exception of Uma Thurman, the space occupied by Matt Dillon has been in a certain state of expansion when facing other victims. This is undoubtedly frequently revealing the hegemony revealed by the killer as the dominator. In this way, its context is very different from previous works.
Why did Russ make such a change? I still remember that after filming "Melancholia", he excitedly hinted to the Cannes media that he was writing an extremely wonderful script about a woman who was stuck in the quagmire of sexual desire. Within a few days, he was expelled from Cannes for "Nazi speech." Many people say "This House Is Made By Me" is Lars's response to this turmoil. Perhaps, just like the previous works, this film also has a lot of private goods, such as the animated passages of the shadow of the street lamp, which are really obvious confessions. However, I feel that this is a reflection and joking about his own creation, just using the cruel story of a serial killer as a shell.
Because of the dark and violent elements in the story, we would think that this time Russ seemed a little casual and straightforward. This is not an illusion, it is the case. In "This House Is Made By Me", we can see that Russ uses more typified narrative techniques, and many scenes are as exquisite and bizarre as well-structured dramas. Compared with the previous works, although it has more bloody smell, it is no longer so esoteric and psychedelic. In any case, as one of the initiators of the last film movement in the 20th century, Lars von Trier today is more like an old urchin. He unreservedly injected genre humor into Jack's experience. This humor is not meant to make the film like a comedy, but to be too lazy to go around and satirize.
These ironies are not worthy of further investigation, because they are unabashedly placed in front of the camera. Humorous elements make the film look very naive at some point, and when it is wrapped in bloody scenes that make people feel physiologically uncomfortable, it gives birth to a complex taste. Therefore, it has formed a situation that uses the name of art and history to describe the plight of individuals, and under the sense of step-by-step design and ritual, it directly reaches the darkness and ugliness of human civilization. Not only that, Lars used Jack's mouth to praise it as a kind of philosophical beauty, but it made morality and law more dry and fragile.
Over the years, although we have realized Lars's image aesthetics from different levels, this time there is still something different. In my opinion, Russ’ creation can be divided into three periods: "European Trilogy" is a period that is overly obsessed with formalist techniques; "Dougma 95" is a period that starts with fairy tales and uses Extreme natural realism is expressed; since the "Antichrist" is the third period, a variety of styles are combined, and grammatically summarized and sublated. From psychedelic images, to the rejection and confrontation of Hollywood, to the different methods, to some extent, Russ has received more tempering than the average director. "This house is made by me" is likely to start his fourth creative period, but it is still too early to say, it depends on whether the next work will continue.
For this film alone, Lars has evolved his images to a new level through continuous changes in form and style over the years. The text of the film will look straightforward and plain, but the striking sense of form cannot be ignored. The audiovisual language and the theme content form a close whole, and each link is the crystallization of past experiments. Obviously, after the hustle and bustle of the "Dougma 95" movement faded, the biggest legacy left to Lass was the creation of his unique lens style. Regardless of whether the director of photography is Anthony Mante or Manuel Claro, the lens processing method of Russ' work is always the same.
Unlike hand-held photography in other movies, Russ’ hand-held photography maintains a wave-like movement during more frequent push and pull, which creates a vague sense of rhythm. It just happens that Paul Greengrass' new film "July 22" has been repeatedly discussed recently, so we can make a comparison.
Paul created a new way of mirroring and editing in action movies. For details, you can see the "The Bourne" series and "Captain Phillips". In these movies, hand-held photography breaks and grinds each scene, only presenting the moment that captures the key action. Although this will make some people feel dizzy, we will not easily think that such fast editing and mirroring are confusing, but will show a kind of documentary. However, this documentary is completely disguised, the purpose is to make the spectacle movements in the picture more believable. From the perspective of perception, this kind of images with more violent shaking and more fragmented editing will make people feel nervous and excited, and the blood is surging.
In "July 22", this way of mirroring was retained. Although because of the subject matter, the editing is not as fragmented as before. In this film about the terrorist attack in Norway seven years ago, Paul's hand-held photography emphasizes a sense of presence, with the focus always tremblingly tracking the "high-value target" in the picture, with stern precision. In a large episode of the terrorist attack in the film, the audience is off the court, but only feels "relatively safe" because our emotions are completely controlled by the camera. Although we will shudder in the face of the plot and the faces of the characters, it will eventually return. There is no immediate danger. Here, the camera is more like a person, it won't be hurt or drifting away.
"This room is made by me", or the film since "The Antichrist," Lars's handheld photography is significantly different from Paul's. Although "Breaking the Waves" had already begun to take shape, its images were even more noticed because of the proposition of "Dougma", and the photography style is still in the groping stage. After the gradual maturity of "Dogtown" and "Mandalay", by the time of "Antichrist", Russ's handheld photography has obviously jumped to a new level, and he has reached perfection with "Melancholia". From the perspective of video style, although "This House Is Made By Me" does not create a new look, it can be regarded as a masterpiece of past works.
Without discussing the montage inside the lens, the camera movement and the editing method will always influence each other. Lars's editing is naturally not as fragmented as Paul, and the jitter of handheld photography is not severe. His shots often fluctuate regularly, achieving a certain rhythm and rhythm. When watching these movies, we don't care too much about a certain kind of documentary. The handheld photography doesn't emphasize the sense of presence.
What Lars's lens is more willing to capture is the character's expression and some subtle details, so as to achieve emotional rendering. Here, the emotions of the characters are not diffracted through the documentary of camouflage, but directly witnessed from close range. Sometimes, the lens fluctuates within a certain range, as if sitting on a boat, and suddenly draws closer to the character. Sometimes, even the editing cuts in before the focus is set, everything in the picture is temporarily blurred. These seemingly random but actually carefully designed moments are the key to the rhythm of the image. We drifted off the court and maintained "absolute security", but we felt panic inside.
In the past, Russ tried his best to express reality through different channels, such as the pure visual reality of "Golden Heart Trilogy" and the stage reality of "American Two Steps". However, he knew from beginning to end that there was a huge gap between reality and reality. Therefore, although Lars is a member of "Dougma", his photography was quite formal from the beginning (also because of his early creative style). Later, he also suffered from the shackles and simply gave up "Dougma." However, its wave-like handheld photography has been greatly promoted, so that in "This House Is Made By Me", the lens movement has become the soul of the film. To be exaggerated, in this tyrannical movie, hand-held photography no longer imitates personality, but like an invisible demon, staring at the characters panting, greedy and restless.
There is no difference between the two photography styles. It depends on whether they can reach a tacit agreement with the art design and narrative characteristics. If you change the way the two handle the camera, everyone is bound to die. The success of both lies in complementing their own text and theme to achieve an unforgettable image quality.
"This House Is Made By Me" was exaggerated by the media, and its large-scale images caused many Cannes audiences to leave the show. But after actually watching it, the film does not have a plot that is too out of the ordinary, and the bloody scenes appear as few times as the morning star, which is within the acceptable range of most people. Just like Lars’s previous works, although there are always very eye-catching curious elements (sex addiction, anti-religious, ethical, experimental) before watching, the feature film is far more than these gimmicks. He always satisfies his own reactionary psychology by seducing the disgust or pity of the audience-this is also like an old naughty boy's mood. However, objectively speaking, the sharp topicality and artistry in his works are not low.
This time, Lars used a series of symbols or codes such as architectural design, winemaking, painting, piano geek Gould, and obsessive-compulsive disorder to "justify" the killing. This distorted interpretation of killing and art is actually an excuse for self-deception. So Russ finally took Jack to the underworld. The whole movie looks more absurd than his previous works, even a bit nihilistic, and it is like a big game he played with the audience. Even if the noble rot wine is used to compare the beauty of death, it cannot change the fact that the obsessive-compulsive disorder killer is hesitant and powerless.
The normal narrative interspersed with famous paintings and "scientific and educational fragments" (this is still different from the thesis movie) is just one of the tricks that Lars played this time. From a more macro perspective, after the unsuccessful attempt of "Plague", Lars made a deformation of the layer structure this time. He borrowed the previous form of narration to let the dialogue between Jack and Virgil run through the five stories. Finally, the polyphonic narrative in "Dancer in the Dark" is refined, which directly allows Jack to enter the "Divine Comedy", revealing the core of the whole film.
In the second half of the movie, Lars first used a mixed cut to complete his self-deconstruction, and then used the cold storage sewer as a metaphor for the vagina, allowing Jack to enter hell. After the upgrade shot of "Virgil and Dante Crossing the Stygian", Jack is reborn as a complete Dante. At this time, the film no longer bothered to explain to the audience Jack's change of mood. "The Divine Comedy" writes that after boarding the ferry boat on the Styx, their fears turned into eagerness and anxiety. Dante's poems have a reorganization of religious mythology, but the film has a double deconstruction in the text. Through these obvious images and unrealistic scenes, what Ras wants to express is still the desperate situation of human fate and the struggle of individual desires.
"The Divine Comedy" and the story of Jack's murder constitute the layered structure of "This House Is Made By Me", but they are both external and internal, not one inside and one outside. Lars' understanding of hell-purgatory-heaven reminds me of Borges' "Nine Dante". Like the movie, in "The Divine Comedy", Virgil and Dante are both teachers and friends, and they travel through the underworld for different motives. The film subdivided it as Jack was guided by Virgil to understand the confusion and entered the God Realm, but this search is destined to be vain. In the end, he fell into the abyss because of greed and recklessness. This recklessness actually stems from the lack of faith. Francesco summed up the "Divine Comedy": "From a literary point of view, the theme of this poem is the soul that has been separated from the body, and from a moral point of view, it is a reward or punishment for oneself." It is used as a reminder. This movie is also very suitable.
No matter how complicated the techniques and tricks of Lars this time are, even if the following religious rhetoric and grand propositions are eliminated, "This House Is Made By Me" is also one of the best movies about serial killers. The only shortcoming is that the narrative in Chapter 4 is quite a failure, and a large number of "criminal elements" dialogues dilute the tone of the scene. The conversation between Jack and his girlfriend, who is also the next victim, is nothing extraordinary, just repeatedly emphasizing the stupidity and indifference around him. But the rest of the film is very exciting. Russ always makes movies like shooting with a gun. When he hits the ten rings of human nature, the movie can exert a full impact. This time, he hit the 9th ring at least.
View more about The House That Jack Built reviews
