Ron's rages are sincere and — according to his wife — healthily cathartic. But can these splenetic outbursts loosen the grip of capitalism at its most monstrous?
Horror and homilies in the house that von Trier built
The Danish director’s latest is an uneasy mix of graphic carnage and philosophical musings, says ALAN FRANK
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The House that Jack Built (18)
Directed by Lars von Trier
“FOR many years I’ve made films about good women, now I did a film about an evil man,” says Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier of his extraordinary and often nausea-inducing art-film shocker.
His scarifying portrait of a serial killer over 20 years in the Pacific north west is replete with all-too-realistic imagery of sadistic slaughters, rather too often awkwardly interspersed, to disconcerting effect, with von Trier’s views on life, death and culture.
We first meet the eponymous Jack, chillingly played by Matt Dillon in the best from of his career, as he undertakes the first of several uncomfortably graphic slaughter sprees that advance the narrative when he gives a woman (Uma Thurman) a lift when her car breaks down, only to smash her face in with a jack that doesn’t work.
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