Written by Hami J.

My initial impression while watching the first few scenes of The House that Jack Built wasn’t particularly positive: 1) Uma Thurman’s awkward attempts to mess with Jack’s mind and entice him into violence—despite coming across as a seemingly helpless and lone woman 2) the repeated close-ups and excessive focus on the car jack, 3) the predictable blow to the head, 4) the second woman’s totally skeptical and scared expression when confronted with Jack’s unabashed lies, yet allowing him into her home due to her sudden gullibility and greed for money. All of this seemed like bad writing or direction and left me with mixed feelings.

BUT, about 45 minutes into the film, it becomes clear that the story is Jack’s subjective narrative, filled with narcissistic recollections. The portrayed weakness of the women, it turns out, is Jack’s defense mechanism against women in general and a projection of his own OCD. This narrative approach is a somewhat overused tactic that allows characters to engage in every imaginable irrational acts under the guise of subjective recollection of reality. This cliché becomes even worse given Lars Von Trier’s own obsession with extradiegetic elements and narrative irrationality.

By the second half of the movie, I was convinced that the story has shifted its focus: Jack was no longer a character but rather a blatant stand-in for Lars himself. With this assumption in mind, the story draws a parallel between a psychopath’s acts of murder (as a response to his existential anguish) and an artist’s creative work (as a means to satisfy his creative impulses). This parallel could be seen as a rather narcissistic take on the whole filmmaking process; a narrative approach that feels forced; a cinematic technique to blur the lines between creator and creation. This is not a negative approach in and of itself, but potentially dilutes the dramatic impact and the autonomy that films often strive for. The film loses its independence as a self-contained piece of work and becomes bound (read chained) to its director’s theoretical mindset. Perhaps the concept of sublimation in its psychoanalytic sense is relevant here: the film itself serves as a therapy session for Lars as he channels his dark side through art and spares us from the sinister “creative” acts that he can unleash upon the world!