His new film, the typically shocking The House That Jack Built, is supposed to be the director’s big comeback. But his demons seem to have the upper hand
Lars von Trier has a new film coming out and, no surprise, it is a full-blown assault on the senses. The House That Jack Built casts Matt Dillon, that 80s beefcake, as a smirking psychopath who views his killings as performance art and his grisly trophies as stand-alone installations. Jack kills without remorse, and seemingly without consequence, merrily bouncing from one atrocity to the next. There is a mass shooting in a sunlit meadow, sexual violence inside a cramped apartment and a scene in which a small boy cuts the legs off a duck. Von Trier’s story is intentionally brutal; it dares you to stick with it. But the shock of watching the film is nothing compared with the shock of meeting its maker.
It is perhaps the fate of all enfants terribles to eventually slip up and be trampled – either by their own demons or by the weight of public opinion. But Von Trier has fallen harder than most and been steamrollered more thoroughly. For years, like his character Jack, the Danish director rolled the dice and rode his luck. He was the impish scourge of bourgeois sensibilities, a gleeful chronicler of so much human cruelty. Now he is physically spent and emotionally shot. His tussle with alcohol and depression has taken its toll. He believes his ill-starred 13th feature will be his movie swan song. “When I saw it on screen, I felt that very strongly,” he says. “It looked to me like some kind of last testament.”
Continue reading...from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2zCNqiY
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