The House That Jack Built
About a serial killer who starts out with a touch of Harry Caul but then gets into the swing of it. Seems above all to be a playful self-reflection on the hubris, narcissism, obsessionality, futility and amorality of artistic endeavour. And, conversely, about how the greatest mass-murdering criminals, Hitler, Stalin, Mao & co., are all also something like icon-producing artists of destruction, and how this “converseness” is actually an irreducible intertwining turning on the composition of entropy and the struggle against it.
Bearing some similarities to NYMPHOMANIAC (2013), with edifying digressions and parables on the paradoxes of morality, this doesn’t reach the same heights (perhaps for no reason other than because addiction to murder isn’t as compelling as addiction to sex, at least for this viewer), but still provides plenty of nuggets, including Goethe’s Oak at Buchenwald, as well as a highly memorable recreation of Géricault’s “Raft of the Medusa”. For Bernard Stiegler, THE WIND RISES (2013) is perhaps the greatest film about the engineer as realiser of dreams (see also the entry for that film), but for me this is at least as rich and probably stronger (and it is surely notable that whereas Miyazaki is focused on the Mitsubishi A6M fighter, that is, the “Zero”, von Trier gives space for consideration of the Junkers Ju 87, that is, the “Stuka”). Note also that the killer is left-handed.
Bearing some similarities to NYMPHOMANIAC (2013), with edifying digressions and parables on the paradoxes of morality, this doesn’t reach the same heights (perhaps for no reason other than because addiction to murder isn’t as compelling as addiction to sex, at least for this viewer), but still provides plenty of nuggets, including Goethe’s Oak at Buchenwald, as well as a highly memorable recreation of Géricault’s “Raft of the Medusa”. For Bernard Stiegler, THE WIND RISES (2013) is perhaps the greatest film about the engineer as realiser of dreams (see also the entry for that film), but for me this is at least as rich and probably stronger (and it is surely notable that whereas Miyazaki is focused on the Mitsubishi A6M fighter, that is, the “Zero”, von Trier gives space for consideration of the Junkers Ju 87, that is, the “Stuka”). Note also that the killer is left-handed.
Mini Review: About a serial killer who starts out with a touch of Harry Caul but then gets into the swing of it. Seems above all to be a playful self-reflection on the hubris, narcissism, obsessionality, futility and amorality of artistic endeavour. Bearing some similarities to NYMPHOMANIAC, with edifying digressions and parables on the paradoxes of morality, this doesn't reach the same heights, perhaps because addiction to murder isn't as compelling as addiction to sex, but still provides plenty of nuggets.
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