When we talk about the best movies of 2018, everyone may have different answers. But when we talk about the most controversial movie of 2018, there is only one answer: "This House Is Made By Me" by Lars von Trier. Since von Trier decided to make this serial killer movie, controversy has been with him. People who don't like him think that this is just an excuse for his firing on the public and the media, and that is true to some extent.
"This House is Made by Me" is full of sensory and intellectual provocations to the audience, which caused more than one hundred audiences to leave during the film's premiere in Cannes. When it was released in the United States, the operation of the distributor IFC caused more controversy: at the premiere, it changed the abridged version rated as R and replaced it with an unrated director’s cut version (that is, Cannes edition), which has led to a ban from the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America). As a result, IFC had to postpone the release of the director's cut version in the United States until June next year. By the way, the film sources we can see now are all cut R-rated versions.
As for the media's response to the film, it is also very polarized. Many commentators used adjectives such as "empty", "boring" and "disgusting" when describing the film, but some people regarded it as a "masterpiece". The French "Cinema Manual" magazine took it at the end of the year. Rated as the top ten of the year.
So is "This House Is Made By Me" really worth seeing? In fact, for me, the temperament closest to this movie is the famous song " Symphathy for the Devil " by the Rolling Stones :
Allow me to introduce myself Also a bit of taste / Use all the social etiquette you learned / Otherwise I will throw your soul into the garbage dump
If you can accept the violence, vanity, and courage of the devil, then you can accept "This House Is Made By Me". Otherwise, this film will definitely not be your food.
1
Like the protagonist in "Sympathize with the Devil", the male protagonist Jack (Matt Dillon) in "This House Is Made By Me" is also a heinous antichrist. The film shows his homicide history for more than ten years, and consists of five unrelated homicide events to form the plot. Connecting the five killings is the dialogue between Jack and a mysterious elder named Virgil (Bruno Gantz). In it, Jack explains his philosophy of killing and expresses his views on art, Insights on historical and metaphysical issues.
From these five killings, we can see that Jack is a typical anti-social psychopath. He hates human beings and opposes all the positive values promoted by society. Family, fertility, love, feminism, social authority, these values have been molested and teased in Jack's killings. This kind of mischievous psychology is the source of the pleasure that prompted Jack to kill continuously.
What's interesting is that Jack's several killings were not as perfectly laid out and logically clear as the serial killers in "The Seven Deadly Sins" and "Hannibal". In the first two killings in the film, one was a temporary intention and the other was extremely awkward. He didn't know how to cover up the traces of the murder: he parked the deceased's car on the side of the road, left fingerprints everywhere at the scene of the murder, and made the sirens of the stolen police car roar beside the warehouse where his body was hidden.
However, Jack has always been able to overcome danger and get away with it for more than ten years. Such a blundering plot is more in line with the real serial killer case: the murderer has not been captured for a long time, not because of his high IQ, but more often because of the lack of strictness between the murders he committed. The logical connection, coupled with factors such as coincidence and the incompetence of the police.
So, "This House Is Made By Me" is actually a very realistic serial killer movie. Its protagonist is not as charming as Hannibal Lecter and "John Doe"; the violent scenes in the film are mediocre or even ugly, but this is the truth about serial murders.
As for people's accusations of von Trier's "misogyny", it is not unfounded: the main victims in the film are all women, the first victim died of talking too much, and the second died of stupidity and greed. She knew that Jack had been lying, but when Jack claimed that she could double her pension, she did not hesitate to put Jack into the house. So does von Trier really think women are greedy and stupid?
Perhaps Matt Dillon's own experiences can provide a definitive answer to this question. Dillon said that he was not sure at the beginning whether von Trier really hated women, but when he started acting, he immediately understood: all the stupid performances of female characters in this movie are all from Jack's imagination! When Dillon told von Trier this idea, von Trier gave him a tacit look: "You finally understand what I mean."
Like Jack, von Trier is also a prankster who can't stop. The trap he set up for us is the unreliable narrator's technique in the film: since all the scenes are from Jack’s narration, we cannot be sure, which views in the film are from Jack, and which views are from von Tie Yours. So when we were anxious to attack von Trier's misogyny, narcissism and anti-humanity, we already lost in the first round.
2
But the defense of von Trier, like von Trier himself, will lead to unsolvable paradoxes. Von Trier may not be misogynistic, but he is really narcissistic and anti-human. In fact, he is not a "Nazi" (Nazi), he is just a "Narcissist" (narcissist).
If Jack’s misogyny may only come from the character itself, then a large part of Jack’s thinking about art, history, and philosophy comes from von Trier himself. And these thoughts are also the reason why "This House Is Made By Me", as a brutal and desperate movie, can still bring people's pleasure: von Trier/Jack's quotations are indeed eye-opening.
In order to prove his superiority and the legitimacy of his murder, Jack exhausted his best efforts to find evidence from Blake's poems, Gould's music and the pointed arch design of Gothic architecture to carry out his own sophistry. And this kind of wild sophistry, combined with von Trier's dazzling cross-text collage, is overwhelming to watch.
From the Stuka bomber in Nazi Germany to the star figures of Bob Dylan and David Bowie , all these seemingly unrelated elements have become organic elements of von Trier’s murder thesis. The collision between images of different materials is another pleasure that the film brings to people: when von Trier replaced the naturalistic images of the killing scene with gorgeous, solemn and shocking images of hell, and then used "Wilderness" When the rough images like "Survival" are used to deconstruct the solemn atmosphere of the scene of "Dante" and "Virgil" crossing the Styx, I believe that people will be conquered by his lawless talent and sense of humor.
3
"This House Is Made By Me" is, to a large extent, von Trier's self-explanation of the "Nazi" basket he stabbed seven years ago. At the Cannes press conference for his 2011 work "Melancholia", he once said half-jokingly: When he was a child he thought he was a Jew, but when he grew up he found out that he was of Germanic origin. Since then, he can understand Hitler to some extent. "Well, I am a Nazi!"
This cold joke, which is getting darker and darker, brought von Trier to the Cannes ban for several years. In fact, von Trier only once again exposed his habit of molesting the public. In a recent interview, he gave the most direct explanation of Hitler's topic: "Of course I don't approve of anything Hitler did. He is a bastard. But I don't agree that people exclude him from humans. As if his evil deeds did not come from human nature itself, it would not solve the problem at all."
But in the same interview, when von Trier was asked about his views on VR, he said that he didn't think VR is art because this medium is too democratic. "I have always believed that real art is authoritarian."
Through these two passages, we can understand von Trier’s obsession with Hitler. Jack said in the film the theory of "The Noble Rot" (The Noble Rot): grapes can only become part of the noble wine after they die, rot and decompose, just as murder victims can only be after being murdered, rotted and decomposed. , In order to become a part of the peerless artwork in Jack's eyes.
Von Trier is certainly not a murderer, but at the level of artistic creation, what he did may be tantamount to a massacre. He squeezed the pain of the characters and actors, and at the same time took advantage of the audience's trust in him. From this perspective, he is undoubtedly guilty. But we cannot confuse the sins in art with the sins in reality.
However, von Trier's intentions did not stop at self-justification. The most chilling entry point of "This House Is Made By Me" is not its bloody scenes and anti-human thinking, but the following terrible mystery: Can the indisputable birth of the heinous sins be born? beautiful?
In the death aesthetics of the Stuka bomber and Hitler's architect Albert Speer, von Trier found beauty. And we can also find beauty in the house where Jack was piled up with corpses last . When this well-balanced house is juxtaposed with von Trier’s exquisite and symmetrical composition and Glenn Gould’s elegant and solemn music, it is difficult for us to resist its evil beauty, and we cannot treat us. Turn a blind eye to the darkness and evil inherent in the heart.
This is the true core of von Trier's "provocative aesthetics", and in his narcissistic view, he is the only one who exposes the truth to the world. On the other hand, the mysterious figure symbolized by the ancient Roman poet Virgil in the film refers to the “positive value” of love, inspiration and homesickness on the surface, but in the end we will discover that they all lead you to hell Bait, they are all scams.
But just as no one loves himself like von Trier, nor does he hate himself like von Trier. He seemed convinced that after so much provocation, manipulation and incitement to the world, he was destined to go to hell. This also makes "This House Is Made By Me" at the end, and even a bit of a posthumous meaning: von Trier seems to want to pass this humorous and terrifying, superficial and profound, slippery and sincere movie. , To put a conclusion on his life.
This is not only a demon declaration from hell, but also a desperate book of self-abuse.
Extended information:
Von Trier at the scene of the 2011 Cannes car accident
In-depth interview with von Trier in 2018
(Originally published in "Iris")
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