The House That Jack Built (2018)

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Movie
Original title The House That Jack Built
Country of production Denmark , Germany , France , Sweden
original language English
Publishing year 2018
length 153 minutes
Age rating FSK 18
Rod
Director Lars from Trier
script Lars from Trier
production Louise Vesth
camera Manuel Alberto Claro
cut Molly Marlene Stensgaard
occupation

The House That Jack Built is a horror - thriller by Lars von Trier , who on May 14, 2018 at the 71st Cannes Film Festival premiered. The film celebrated its German premiere on September 29, 2018 at the Hamburg Film Festival. The regular German theatrical release took place on November 29, 2018. The film tells the story of the highly intelligent serial killer Jack.

action

The highly intelligent Jack has an irrepressible desire to kill people. For twelve years in the 1970s and early 1980s in the United States, he murdered a row of people and developed into a serial killer. Jack posits that every murder is a work of art. As the police get closer and closer to him, he takes ever greater risks to create the ultimate work of art. From the off, Jack repeatedly exchanges ideas with the mysterious Verge, who is only shown at the end of the film.

background

The film title is a reference to the popular English nursery rhyme This is the House that Jack Built , which consists of individual verses that build on each other to tell a story. The song is divided into 12 verse blocks of different lengths that are becoming more and more extensive, which tell 12 different events. In the last block of verses it says in the most common version:

An illustration from the picture and song book This is the House that Jack Built by Randolph Caldecott from 1887
in the English original: in the German translation:
This is the horse and the hound and the horn
That belonged to the farmer sowing his corn
That kept the rooster that crowed in the morn
That woke the judge all shaven and shorn
That married the man all tattered and torn
That kissed the maiden all forlorn
That milked the cow with the crumpled horn
That tossed the dog that worried the cat
That killed the rat that ate the malt
That lay in the house that Jack built.
That is the horse and the dog and the horn
that belonged to the farmer who sowed his corn
who held the rooster that crowed in the morning
who woke the shaved and clipped judge
who married the ragged and filthy man
who kissed the abandoned girl
that milked the cow with the crooked horns
that shook the dog that teased the cat,
who killed the rat that ate the malt,
that was in the house that Jack built

The self-assembling story doesn't really tell about Jack's house or even about Jack himself who built it, but shows how this house is indirectly connected to other people and things, such as the lumpy and dirty man, the completely abandoned one Girls and from the connections of these people and small events.

The number 12 also has a meaning in Lars von Trier's film, as the story in which Jack murders spans twelve years in the 1970s and early 1980s. IndieWire's Eric Kohn explains that Jack accepts Verge's challenge in the film and announces his plan to describe "five randomly selected incidents over a period of twelve years," all of which involve gruesome murders. He brings the viewer up to date about his crimes. He uses "incidents" to tell not only about his first murders, but also about his own biography as an engineer. Jack would actually prefer to be an architect and has been trying to build his own house for years, which directly takes up the title of the film.

There were already a few books, songs and films that took up the title of the nursery rhyme and some of its content, such as The House that Jack Built by Linda Evans from 2001, an identical song by Aretha Franklin (from 1968) and one by Alan Price from 1967; The House Jack Built by Metallica appeared in 1996. Even as a movie title there is the term often.

production

Staff, cast and dubbing

Matt Dillon at the premiere for the film as part of the Cannes Film Festival in May 2018

Directed by Lars von Trier , who also wrote the script (based on a story by Jenle Hallund). IFC Films, which had already released Trier's film Antichrist from 2009, announced at the Cannes International Film Festival in 2017 that they had also acquired the distribution rights for the film.

Matt Dillon took on the role of Jack. Bruno Ganz plays the mysterious Verge in his mind.

The German dubbing was created after the dialogue direction by Pierre Peters-Arnolds on behalf of Christa Kistner Synchronproduktion GmbH, Berlin.

Filming and publishing

Filming began in Sweden in March 2017. The film was shot here in the surroundings of Trollhättan and Bengtsfors, which are valued and trusted by Trier . Further recordings were made in Denmark's capital Copenhagen . The animal rights organization PETA had confirmed that no animal was harmed during the shooting. Body parts of the tormented duck shown in the film were made of silicone.

The House That Jack Built premiered out of competition on May 14, 2018 at the 71st Cannes Film Festival , but ran there without the official festival trailer that normally precedes the films. For the first time since the scandal surrounding him at the 2011 film festival, von Trier is represented with a film at the festival. A first trailer for the film was released shortly before the premiere in Cannes. In July and August 2018, the film was shown at the Nowe Horyzonty Polish film festival. On September 29, 2018 it was shown at the Hamburg Film Festival . In October 2018 it was presented at the Sitges Film Festival and the Film Festival Cologne . In autumn 2018 there was also a screening at the Zurich Film Festival .

On November 29, 2018, the film was released in German cinemas by Concorde Classic. IFC Films holds the rights to market the film in the USA. There are two different versions there. On November 28th, it was shown in cinemas in the USA for one day in the uncut Director's Cut version, which was also shown in Cannes, before an abbreviated R-Rated version as of December 14, 2018 launched in cinemas as well as digital video on demand . The Director's Cut will then also be available on VoD for a fee. On June 6, 2019, it was released on Blu-ray .

In Germany, the film was not approved for young people by the FSK . Johannes Hahn from Robots & Dragons explains that violence may not be celebrated in the film, but at least it is distorted into the grotesque and absurd: “It helps to realize that the things shown are only special effects. Still: The House That Jack Built is brutal. Both physically and mentally. ”The mind games that Jack plays with at least one victim could create tension, but at the same time hurt sensitive minds, Hahn continues. Markus Aicher from BR24 explains that the film is too good for real splatter fans, but too shocking for classic art house moviegoers.

reception

Reviews

Insiders who had seen footage of The House That Jack Built before its premiere described scenes of extreme brutality and violence and compared them to Lars von Trier's controversial film Antichrist starring Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe . At the premiere in Cannes in May 2018, some guests left the cinema early because the film was apparently too brutal for them. The film also caused outrage because children were murdered in it, and some viewers found the scenes in question "unbearable" and "cruel". However, these initial reactions did not completely harm the film, according to Deutsche Welle , as all the talk and twittering primarily brought PR, and many users wrote that they were curious about the coverage of the boycott in the hall and that the film is now would have to see once more. Carmine Carpenito from blairwitch.de also believes that von Trier should have paid off again, as he will probably leave Cannes once again as the number one topic of conversation.

Overall, the film received mixed feedback from the critics.

Wenke Husmann ( Zeit Online ) says that with The House That Jack Built , Lars von Trier failed to understand a killer. She compares the film with a kind of descent into Dante's Hellmouth, the visual implementation of which lies somewhere between Botticelli's Mappa dell'Inferno and Peter Jackson's The Little Hobbit .

Simon Hadler (orf.at) explains that, like Quentin Tarantino , von Trier himself frees himself from any moral claim in his role as a director: “Here you can laugh when the blood splatters: First fear, then laughter as drive - already Sigmund Freud had defined humor that way. That may be tasteless, but to see it as a justification for violence in the family seems far-fetched. ”Even if one may reject the excessive portrayal of violence in the family for a variety of reasons, von Trier still has to admit that he was talking about The House That Jack Built made one of his best films, says Hadler.

“The Nazis and their sense of aesthetics should not be missing in an opus about the beauty of murder. With The House That Jack Built , Lars von Trier staged another shocker and was boring - right up to the brilliant finale, ”says Frédéric Jaeger, summarizing his review in the online magazine critic.de. He continues: “ The House That Jack Built is quite aloof, looks down and enjoys observing the characters, although the style of the film with its hand-held camera promises greater closeness than it narrates. And yet von Trier occasionally succeeds in producing frightening nightmare images that pay homage to horror precisely because of their casualness. "

Tobias Kniebe is disconcerted in the Süddeutsche Zeitung : “ The House That Jack Built contains the most cynical, cruel and callous scenes that this director has shot so far, and his work has not been poor in these. The whole thing looks like a kind of self-experiment to find out whether complete callousness à la Breivik might not be possible after all, if not real, then by staging made-up atrocities. "Perhaps the film is also something of a private survival for von Trier and desensitization strategy . “At the deepest part of the hell into which Jack descends after the end of his misdeeds, guided by a guide named Verge (Bruno Ganz), in whom one should recognize the Roman poet Virgil , Dante's ferryman in the Divine Comedy , waits again special throat. It shines reddish from the deepest depths, it is about as big as the emptiness that currently gapes in Lars von Trier's soul, and it is absolutely bottomless. "

Awards

Hamburg Film Festival 2018

  • Nomination for the Hamburg producer award for European cinema co-productions
  • Nomination for the Art Cinema Award of the international association of art film theaters

Web links

Commons : The House That Jack Built  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for The House That Jack Built . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF; test number: 184186 / K). Template: FSK / maintenance / type not set and Par. 1 longer than 4 characters
  2. ↑ https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/cannes-festival-snub-lars-von-trier-house-jack-built-1102021
  3. ↑ http://www.indiewire.com/2018/05/the-house-that-jack-built-review-lars-von-trier-1201964207/
  4. ↑ https://www.srf.ch/kultur/film-serien/71-filmfestival-cannes-der-provokateur-lars-von-trier- geht-in-cannes-aufs- ganze
  5. ↑ Search for "The House That Jack Built" in the imdb. Retrieved December 27, 2018 .
  6. ↑ The most bizarre movies coming out in 2018 that will melt your mind. In: looper.com. Retrieved April 24, 2018.
  7. ↑ The House That Jack Built - Matt Dillon for Lars von Trier as Jack the Ripper In: moviepilot.de November 3, 2016.
  8. ↑ Daniel Krüger: Lars von Trier is currently shooting the supposedly most disturbing film of his career. In: musikexpress.de, March 9, 2018.
  9. ↑ Jennifer Ullrich: Film starts on the set of ... Lars von Trier's serial killer film "The House That Jack Built." In: filmstarts.de, March 15, 2017.
  10. ^ Danska provoke Lars von Trier intar Bengtsfors. In: svt.se, March 7, 2017.
  11. ↑ http://www.indiewire.com/2018/05/peta-defends-lars-von-trier-the-house-that-jack-built-duck-mutilation-1201965931/
  12. ↑ The Screenings Guide 2018 . In: festival-cannes.com, May 2, 2018 (accessed May 3, 2018)
  13. ↑ Updated Selection Line-up of the 71st Festival de Cannes . In: festival-cannes.com, April 18, 2018 (accessed April 22, 2018).
  14. ↑ https://www.musikexpress.de/the-house-that-jack-built-trailer-lars-von-trier-1058321/
  15. ^ The House That Jack Built. In: nowehoryzonty.pl. Retrieved July 15, 2018.
  16. ^ The House That Jack Built. In: filmfesthamburg.de. Retrieved September 11, 2018.
  17. ↑ Nicolas Cage and Ed Harris will receive the Grand Honorary Award at a Sitges Festival hitting its high point with a concert by John Carpenter. In: sitgesfilmfestival.com, July 19, 2018.
  18. ↑ https://filmfestival.cologne/festivalprogramm/festivalreihen-2018/best-of-cinema/the-house-that-jack-built/
  19. ^ The House That Jack Built - Zurich Film Festival. Retrieved November 29, 2018 .
  20. ^ The House That Jack Built: Concorde Filmverleih. Retrieved November 29, 2018 .
  21. ↑ Start dates Germany In: insidekino.com. Retrieved September 6, 2018.
  22. ↑ Brent Lang: Lars von Trier Serial Killer Drama 'The House That Jack Built' Lands at IFC. In: Variety, May 25, 2018.
  23. ↑ https://bloody-disgusting.com/movie/3535467/mpaa-going-ifc-tonights-directors-cut-screenings-house-jack-built/
  24. ↑ https://www.schnittberichte.com/news.php?ID=14000
  25. ^ The House That Jack Built. In: dvd-forum.at. Retrieved July 12, 2019.
  26. ↑ http://www.robots-and-dragons.de/news/118832-kritik-the-house-that-jack-built-interpretationswurdig
  27. ↑ https://www.br.de/nachrichten/kultur/lars-von-trier-house-that-jack-built-kritik,RAb3RcR
  28. ↑ https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/cannes-festival-snub-lars-von-trier-house-jack-built-1102021
  29. ↑ https://www.thewrap.com/house-that-jack-built-lars-von-trier-cannes-first-reactions-vomitive-torturous/
  30. ↑ http://www.filmstarts.de/nachrichten/18518734.html
  31. ↑ http://www.dw.com/de/lars-von-trier-schockt-mit-einem-horror-thriller/a-43803747
  32. ↑ http://www.blairwitch.de/news/the-house-that-jack-built-schockiert-cannes-65121/
  33. ↑ https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_house_that_jack_built_2018
  34. ^ Wenke Husmann: "The House That Jack Built": Blunt shocks. In: Zeit Online. May 16, 2018, accessed May 18, 2018 .
  35. ↑ Lars von Trier on Tarantino's footsteps. In: news.ORF.at. November 2, 2018. Retrieved November 26, 2018 .
  36. ↑ www.critic.de: The House That Jack Built | Criticism. Retrieved November 29, 2018 .
  37. ↑ Tobias Kniebe: A film like a perverse therapy session . In: sueddeutsche.de . November 29, 2018, ISSN  0174-4917 ( sueddeutsche.de [accessed November 29, 2018]).
  38. ↑ https://www.filmfesthamburg.de/de/information/awards/28719/01_Hamburger_Produzenzpreis_fuer_Europaeische_Kino_Koproduktionen_1
  39. ↑ https://www.filmfesthamburg.de/de/information/awards/28774/05_Art_Cinema_Award