The House That Jack Built (Lars von Trier, 2018)
- Noiretirc
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Re: The House That Jack Built (Lars von Trier, 2018)
I'm sure that all of these people adore Schindler's List though.
- dda1996a
- Joined: Tue Oct 27, 2015 6:14 am
Re: The House That Jack Built (Lars von Trier, 2018)
Yeah, can you please not? ThanksNoiretirc wrote:I'm sure that all of these people adore Schindler's List though.
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Re: The House That Jack Built (Lars von Trier, 2018)
To be fair it's not like Spielberg never treated brutal violence as entertainment value.dda1996a wrote:Yeah, can you please not? ThanksNoiretirc wrote:I'm sure that all of these people adore Schindler's List though.
- dda1996a
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Re: The House That Jack Built (Lars von Trier, 2018)
To be fair I don't think using the Holocaust or a filmic presentation of it should be made here.
- mfunk9786
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Re: The House That Jack Built (Lars von Trier, 2018)
How many walkouts is this thread gonna get?
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Re: The House That Jack Built (Lars von Trier, 2018)
I never said it was Schindler's List that did it.dda1996a wrote:To be fair I don't think using the Holocaust or a filmic presentation of it should be made here.
- mfunk9786
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Re: The House That Jack Built (Lars von Trier, 2018)
The chief critic at Vanity Fair, ladies and germs
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- Joined: Tue Dec 26, 2017 5:35 am
Re: The House That Jack Built (Lars von Trier, 2018)
Oh man I feel really bad for him. Who knew taking a film critic job meant you had to see movies. Even ones you're biased against.
- bainbridgezu
- Joined: Tue Jan 18, 2011 10:54 pm
Re: The House That Jack Built (Lars von Trier, 2018)
He's since deleted the tweet, which makes him somehow even more pathetic. What is it the kids say? Retire bitch.
- Lost Highway
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Re: The House That Jack Built (Lars von Trier, 2018)
Every few years Von Trier releases some cinematic provocation and every time critics and audiences dutifully clutch their pearls in response, just as intended. This has become a Road Runner cartoon and the lack of self awareness of those being played is ridiculous.
- MichaelB
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Re: The House That Jack Built (Lars von Trier, 2018)
...and then I catch up with it a few years later and wonder what all the fuss was about. I suppose I should get round to Antichrist one of these days, but I’m (still) not in any hurry.Lost Highway wrote:Every few years Von Trier releases some cinematic provocation and every time critics and audiences dutifully clutch their pearls in response, just as intended. This has become a Road Runner cartoon and the lack of self awareness of those being played is ridiculous.
- Lost Highway
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Re: The House That Jack Built (Lars von Trier, 2018)
I‘m not disagreeing, I feel the same about his actual work. As to Antichrist, there are things to recommend it but they aren’t the themes, ideas or the balls pounding. Its cursed fairy tale forest is a thing of beauty though.MichaelB wrote:...and then I catch up with it a few years later and wonder what all the fuss was about. I suppose I should get round to Antichrist one of these days, but I’m (still) not in any hurry.Lost Highway wrote:Every few years Von Trier releases some cinematic provocation and every time critics and audiences dutifully clutch their pearls in response, just as intended. This has become a Road Runner cartoon and the lack of self awareness of those being played is ridiculous.
I’m not easily provoked by depictions of violence, no matter how transgressive, especially not when I know what I’m in for. I find the performative virtue signaling around extreme films tiresome. You can’t get through a discussion of A Serbian Film without lots of people professing their outrage without even having seen the film, positioning themselves as morally superior to anybody who would as much as watch the film or even see some value in it.
- tenia
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Re: The House That Jack Built (Lars von Trier, 2018)
But on the other end, many extremely violent films haven't much more to offer than just button-pushing violence, and it seems to be the problem with this LVT movie.
I don't mind extreme violence on screen myself. But as for Serbian Film, I'm amongst those who've actually seen it (twice) and while my memory of it is now quite fuzzy, I found it to be just not very good and interesting. I understand what it tried to achieve. I just think it wasn't very good at it, and that it chose a very gratuitously way to do it. If you can't get to the heart or the brain, get to the guts...
I much prefer the 1st Human Centipede, which is much less graphic, but is IMO better done and atmospherically better crafted.
I don't mind extreme violence on screen myself. But as for Serbian Film, I'm amongst those who've actually seen it (twice) and while my memory of it is now quite fuzzy, I found it to be just not very good and interesting. I understand what it tried to achieve. I just think it wasn't very good at it, and that it chose a very gratuitously way to do it. If you can't get to the heart or the brain, get to the guts...
I much prefer the 1st Human Centipede, which is much less graphic, but is IMO better done and atmospherically better crafted.
- Lost Highway
- Joined: Thu Aug 29, 2013 7:41 am
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Re: The House That Jack Built (Lars von Trier, 2018)
Having been shocked by the atrocities committed during the Yugoslav wars of the 90s, I found it a valid response. It makes an attempt at putting the audience though what those countries went through. It also works as a pitch black outrage comedy, it‘s much like an adaptation of the gross out joke at the centre of the documentary The Aristocrats.tenia wrote:But on the other end, many extremely violent films haven't much more to offer than just button-pushing violence, and it seems to be the problem with this LVT movie.
As for Serbian Film, I'm amongst those who've actually seen it (twice) and while my memory of it is now quite fuzzy, I found it to be just not very good and interesting. I understand what it tried to achieve. I just think it wasn't very good at it, and chose a very gratuitously way to do it. If you can't get to the heart or the brain, get to the guts...
I much prefer the 1st Human Centipede, which is much less graphic, but is better done and atmospherically better crafted.
As someone who's more put off by offensive ideology or politics than extreme imagery, I have no problem with what the film does in that regard. It doesn’t condone any of its atrocities, they are meant to revolt and horrify. In that regard I find the film less problematic than a mainstream Hollywood film like Fatal Attraction, with its anti-feminist pro-family values propaganda.
I’m not even sure where The Human Centipede comes in there apart from that t was discussed in regard to the so called torture porn cinema of the period. I strongly disagree that it is better made than A Serbian Film. It’s fairly amateurishly made, written and acted. Apart from its hilarious bad-taste hook, it doesn’t even deliver on the gross-out promised, it’s a disappointingly timid movie in that regard. Despite a low budget A Serbian Film is a far better made movie in every respect, built around an impressive central performance.
Im not going to go further into discussing the individual merits of each movie we’ve discussed here. Maybe there is some space for that in Navelgazing and Infighting under an Atrocity Cinema thread or some-such.
Last edited by Lost Highway on Tue May 15, 2018 5:36 am, edited 8 times in total.
- tenia
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Re: The House That Jack Built (Lars von Trier, 2018)
Movies that many people discussed as being awfully extreme without even having seen it.Lost Highway wrote:I’m not even sure where The Human Centipede comes in there apart from that it was discussed in regard to the so called torture porn cinema of the period.
- Lost Highway
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Re: The House That Jack Built (Lars von Trier, 2018)
I’ve acknowledged that even in that quote. I think it’s a superficial way of looking at both films.tenia wrote:Movies that many people discussed as being awfully extreme without even having seen it.Lost Highway wrote:I’m not even sure where The Human Centipede comes in there apart from that it was discussed in regard to the so called torture porn cinema of the period.
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Re: The House That Jack Built (Lars von Trier, 2018)
Finally a review. Unfortunately it's from The Playlist. Spoilers of course.
This person is the type that will flat out deny to the death being partly responsible for the rise of the "filmbros" they're calling out. Also.. filmbro?
I'm getting pretty sick of the self serving attitude of "I used to defend this person but now they've gone too far." What does one hope to achieve by saying that aside from unearned privilege of being a "voice of reason"? This article stinks of narcissism.
Lastly, the first publicized qoute from Trier regarding this film months ago was that it celebrates the idea that life is evil and soulless. So... did people not take that seriously?
This person is the type that will flat out deny to the death being partly responsible for the rise of the "filmbros" they're calling out. Also.. filmbro?
I'm getting pretty sick of the self serving attitude of "I used to defend this person but now they've gone too far." What does one hope to achieve by saying that aside from unearned privilege of being a "voice of reason"? This article stinks of narcissism.
Lastly, the first publicized qoute from Trier regarding this film months ago was that it celebrates the idea that life is evil and soulless. So... did people not take that seriously?
- MichaelB
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Re: The House That Jack Built (Lars von Trier, 2018)
Yes, that's very much how the filmmakers pitched it, accompanied by the suggestion that only they were brave enough to tread this kind of psychological terrain. Which is, not to put too fine a point on it, absolute cobblers - A Serbian Film has no more to say about the legacy of 1990s wartime atrocities than, say, Dejan Zečević's The Fourth Man, made a few years earlier. And at least Zečević wasn't pretending to be making any kind of profound statement: he was merely using the characters' past in the same way that American exploitation filmmakers were using the Vietnam veteran. (This is of course but one of countless examples: I watched a lot of Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian films in the late 2000s thanks to multiple trips to the Sarajevo Film Festival.)Lost Highway wrote:Having been shocked by the atrocities committed during the Yugoslav wars of the 90s at the time, I found it a valid response. It makes an attempt at putting the audience though what those countries went through. It also works as a pitch black outrage comedy, it‘s much like an adaptation of the gross out joke at the centre of the documentary The Aristocrats.
That's letting them off the hook to an extent that I really don't think they deserve. In actual fact, I'd argue that the stronger parts of A Serbian Film are to do with the explicit satire (which is even embedded in the title) about how the term "Serbian" has itself become a catch-all suggestion of truly unspeakable brutality - hence the Vukmir character's keenness to market Serbian pornography on the strength of its country of origin.As someone who's more put off by offensive ideology or politics than extreme imagery, I have no problem with what the film does in that regard. It doesn’t condone any of its atrocities, they are meant to revolt and horrify. In that regard I find the film less problematic than a mainstream Hollywood film like Fatal Attraction, with its anti-feminist pro-family values propaganda.
It's just an old-fashioned mad-scientist movie, but hamstrung in this case by asking the question "OK, now what?" about a third of the way in, and never coming up with an even vaguely convincing answer. Still, it broke the record previously set by Herschell Gordon Lewis's Color Me Blood Red for the slowest chase in the history of the cinema, so that's something.I’m not even sure where The Human Centipede comes in there apart from that t was discussed in regard to the so called torture porn cinema of the period. I strongly disagree that it is better made than A Serbian Film. It’s fairly amateurishly made, written and acted. Apart from its hilarious concept, it doesn’t even deliver on the gross out promised, it’s a disappointingly timid movie in that regard.
- Lost Highway
- Joined: Thu Aug 29, 2013 7:41 am
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Re: The House That Jack Built (Lars von Trier, 2018)
I didn't say A Serbian Film has anything to say about the Yugoslav wars. I think it makes the audience want to feel something similar to what I felt when I read about them at the time. That may well be exploitative but I found this allegorical approach less problematic than for instance the much admired Son of Saul, which uses the Holocaust for a self-congratulatory exercise in representation.MichaelB wrote:Yes, that's very much how the filmmakers pitched it, accompanied by the suggestion that only they were brave enough to tread this kind of psychological terrain. Which is, not to put too fine a point on it, absolute cobblers - A Serbian Film has no more to say about the legacy of 1990s wartime atrocities than, say, Dejan Zečević's The Fourth Man, made a few years earlier. And at least Zečević wasn't pretending to be making any kind of profound statement: he was merely using the characters' past in the same way that American exploitation filmmakers were using the Vietnam veteran. (This is of course but one of countless examples: I watched a lot of Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian films in the late 2000s thanks to multiple trips to the Sarajevo Film Festival.)Lost Highway wrote:Having been shocked by the atrocities committed during the Yugoslav wars of the 90s at the time, I found it a valid response. It makes an attempt at putting the audience though what those countries went through. It also works as a pitch black outrage comedy, it‘s much like an adaptation of the gross out joke at the centre of the documentary The Aristocrats.
That's letting them off the hook to an extent that I really don't think they deserve. In actual fact, I'd argue that the stronger parts of A Serbian Film are to do with the explicit satire (which is even embedded in the title) about how the term "Serbian" has itself become a catch-all suggestion of truly unspeakable brutality - hence the Vukmir character's keenness to market Serbian pornography on the strength of its country of origin.As someone who's more put off by offensive ideology or politics than extreme imagery, I have no problem with what the film does in that regard. It doesn’t condone any of its atrocities, they are meant to revolt and horrify. In that regard I find the film less problematic than a mainstream Hollywood film like Fatal Attraction, with its anti-feminist pro-family values propaganda.
It's just an old-fashioned mad-scientist movie, but hamstrung in this case by asking the question "OK, now what?" about a third of the way in, and never coming up with an even vaguely convincing answer. Still, it broke the record previously set by Herschell Gordon Lewis's Color Me Blood Red for the slowest chase in the history of the cinema, so that's something.I’m not even sure where The Human Centipede comes in there apart from that t was discussed in regard to the so called torture porn cinema of the period. I strongly disagree that it is better made than A Serbian Film. It’s fairly amateurishly made, written and acted. Apart from its hilarious concept, it doesn’t even deliver on the gross out promised, it’s a disappointingly timid movie in that regard.
The Human Centipede, like so many exploitation films, has an enticing title and a bad-taste concept John Waters would have been proud of, but it was hampered by its wobbly and surprisingly conventional execution and a lack of delivering on the gross-out goods. The sequel is a marginally more interesting and better made film than the original but not enough for me to watch the third Human Centipede film.
- Oedipax
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Re: The House That Jack Built (Lars von Trier, 2018)
Some critics, at least, seem to like it a lot, going by this aggregator.
I'll be seeing it on Friday night and my curiosity is extremely piqued now. Going into this, I was pretty leery of another Von Trier film in his current aesthetic 'mode,' which for me has had diminishing returns post-Antichrist, becoming quite dull by the time Nymphomaniac came around, but I too think the trailer looks great. Such polarized responses only increase my sense that this might be a pivotal film - hopefully in a positive way - in LvT's filmography.
I would take The Playlist's review with an extreme grain of salt, except to say that it does embody the dominant cultural discourse around art in the U.S. at the moment (something I find as tedious and stupid as it is predictable).
I'll be seeing it on Friday night and my curiosity is extremely piqued now. Going into this, I was pretty leery of another Von Trier film in his current aesthetic 'mode,' which for me has had diminishing returns post-Antichrist, becoming quite dull by the time Nymphomaniac came around, but I too think the trailer looks great. Such polarized responses only increase my sense that this might be a pivotal film - hopefully in a positive way - in LvT's filmography.
I would take The Playlist's review with an extreme grain of salt, except to say that it does embody the dominant cultural discourse around art in the U.S. at the moment (something I find as tedious and stupid as it is predictable).
- mfunk9786
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Re: The House That Jack Built (Lars von Trier, 2018)
Riley Keough has sort of come to von Trier's defense (meaning, artistically at least) on Twitter:
Also, the groundswell of "Scheduling conflicts during Cannes? Suuuuuuuuure" seems to be pretty toothless, as Keough won't be there for Under the Silver Lake either, and Uma Thurman was given a lifetime achievement honor at a Broadway gala last night. I wouldn't take either's absence as some kind of dismissal of von Trier en masse, and even if it were limited to a dismissal of their roles in this film, it would be understandable without being interpreted as some kind of indication that he mistreated either during production.
Oedipax: Yeah, I've been seeing the positive notices trickle in a bit less loudly, but I'm mostly concerned by the fact that many of these reviews indicate that there is a meta layer that makes it very obvious that this is a film about von Trier's relationship to his work, up to and including
One critic said it plays like it could conceivably be his suicide note.
She also faved a tweet calling her performance "punishingly thankless" in the film, though.I would say he has a different way of approaching issues than most. And that he is a provocateur. And to maybe search for a deeper meaning within the film and see if you can find one But his films are not for everyone & everyone is entitled to their own point of view on art.
Also, the groundswell of "Scheduling conflicts during Cannes? Suuuuuuuuure" seems to be pretty toothless, as Keough won't be there for Under the Silver Lake either, and Uma Thurman was given a lifetime achievement honor at a Broadway gala last night. I wouldn't take either's absence as some kind of dismissal of von Trier en masse, and even if it were limited to a dismissal of their roles in this film, it would be understandable without being interpreted as some kind of indication that he mistreated either during production.
Oedipax: Yeah, I've been seeing the positive notices trickle in a bit less loudly, but I'm mostly concerned by the fact that many of these reviews indicate that there is a meta layer that makes it very obvious that this is a film about von Trier's relationship to his work, up to and including
SpoilerShow
the inclusion of clips from his other films.
- mfunk9786
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Re: The House That Jack Built (Lars von Trier, 2018)
That's a pretty good film critic you're slagging off, so you're pretty much just living up to the sort of mostly accurate stereotype she's deriding in this thoughtful review of a film you haven't seen. I'm gonna go with the word of Jessica Kiang over the word of new CriterionForum.org user black&huge 100 times out of 100, even if at my own perilblack&huge wrote:Finally a review. Unfortunately it's from The Playlist. Spoilers of course.
- tenia
- Ask Me About My Bassoon
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Re: The House That Jack Built (Lars von Trier, 2018)
Without knowing the writer nor black&huge and having not seen the movie, it's true that it was hard not to parellel what the review describes and how black&huge was reacting to it.
This being written, I never followed Kiang as an outstanding reviewer and will take your word on this for the future (I'm currently looking at expanding my "reference UK/US reviewers" pool).
This being written, I never followed Kiang as an outstanding reviewer and will take your word on this for the future (I'm currently looking at expanding my "reference UK/US reviewers" pool).
- furbicide
- Joined: Thu Dec 29, 2011 4:52 am
Re: The House That Jack Built (Lars von Trier, 2018)
The end of that review is remarkably defensive. Someone expressing more interest in seeing a film because a critic panned it is a “douchebag”? It’s perfectly ok to hate a film and to express why – it’s just, y’know, possible that not everyone will agree with you.black&huge wrote:Finally a review. Unfortunately it's from The Playlist. Spoilers of course.
This person is the type that will flat out deny to the death being partly responsible for the rise of the "filmbros" they're calling out. Also.. filmbro?
I'm getting pretty sick of the self serving attitude of "I used to defend this person but now they've gone too far." What does one hope to achieve by saying that aside from unearned privilege of being a "voice of reason"? This article stinks of narcissism.
Lastly, the first publicized qoute from Trier regarding this film months ago was that it celebrates the idea that life is evil and soulless. So... did people not take that seriously?
- mfunk9786
- Under Chris' Protection
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Re: The House That Jack Built (Lars von Trier, 2018)
The Playlist is one of the websites my work network doesn't block for its association with "Movies," for whatever reason, so I've read her a bit. But, I mean, if you ask of your film critics that they like everything you like or suspect that you'll like (which, why bother with film criticism then?), YMMV.tenia wrote:Without knowing the writer nor black&huge and having not seen the movie, it's true that it was hard not to parellel what the review describes and how black&huge was reacting to it.
This being written, I never followed Kiang as an outstanding reviewer and will take your word on this for the future (I'm currently looking at expanding my "reference UK/US reviewers" pool).
Can't say I have a ton of issue with a film critic being passionate about their opinion one way or another, it's why I like reading some users here so much, because they won't pull punches, even if that opinion amounts to "how can anyone tell me they like this shit with a straight face??"
Lars von Trier has made a handful of my favorite films, but why get angry because someone strongly dislikes his new one, or even questions my motives for wanting to see it? Life is too short to take such a thing so personally.