The new film by Danish director Lars von Trier «The House That Jack Built» tells about several episodes from the life of a serial killer. The picture, which was highly appreciated by many film critics, but not all viewers are enthusiastic about, was watched by psychoanalyst Andrey Rossokhin at our request. (Warning: this text contains spoilers.)
Lars vor Trier did not make a film about any particular serial killer. The hero of the picture, American Jack (a brilliant work of actor Matt Dillon) is a collective image. Jack has been subtly killing his victims for many years, and now, in a conversation with an invisible interlocutor, he talks about the philosophy of the art of killing.
In fact, the director tells us the story of a man whose death drive is so strong that it captures him first, and gradually destroys the lives of other people. Jack lives in one of two secluded places: in the freezer where he dumps the corpses, and in a beautiful clearing by the lake, where he unsuccessfully tries to build a house for himself.
The ugly (camera) and the beautiful (nature) are equally lifeless and deserted. A living person is incapable of living in an ice morgue. The director hints that Jack himself is gradually becoming an internally stiffened corpse, like his victims.
The world in which Jack exists is devoid of all signs of life. He is incapable of love, empathy, and generally feel anything. But Jack does not become so immediately. Trier brilliantly shows his transformation into a walking corpse.
At the very beginning, his hero is still able to perceive other people as separate living beings, made of flesh and blood. The first victim (played by Uma Thurman) herself unconsciously provokes him to the manifestation of deadly aggression. But at first he resists this inner impulse.
Mentally unhealthy people can inflict wounds, cuts on themselves in order to see blood, feel pain and understand that they are alive.
The first murder, like the second, turns out to be the bloodiest in the film, and this is no coincidence. Blood is a sign of life. Jack is trying to «warm up» with the help of someone else’s blood, to experience something, to feel alive.
As a child, he cut off the paw of a little duckling (the child — «himself») with wire cutters. Mentally unhealthy people can inflict wounds, cuts on themselves in order to see blood, feel pain and understand that they are alive.
Jack, wanting to feel at least something, cripples others. First obsessively cleans up traces of blood after the murder. He calls it the compulsive syndrome. So far, two drives coexist in him: both to life and to death. One «I» of the hero is trying to revive himself with the help of the blood of his victims, and the other is trying to destroy traces of blood, which means traces of life around him.
He still has desire and fear of punishment. But with each new victim, Jack kills himself — the last living thing that still remains in him. The turning point in the film is shown in the form of rain, washing away all the bloody traces after the second murder. In all subsequent episodes, blood (a sign of life) is absent. The compulsive syndrome also disappears. The icy cold fills Jack completely, and the death drive in him wins. People finally become objects for him, material for the creativity of Death.
Verge, Jack’s interlocutor invisible to us, tells the hero that he has the only chance to build a house: to let the victims (that is, the material itself) do it. So there is a house created from dead bodies. There is only one way out of it — straight to hell. The fantasy of a material that creates and controls its author refers us to the idea of the unconscious, which has completely flooded consciousness. When this material (the deadly part of the unconscious) totally subjugates a person whose consciousness disappears, then he turns into a being like Jack.
Why do we need such films?
The director shows how the attraction to death captures a person and drags many other people with it, destroying life around. Every person has this attraction. But we are afraid to realize the depths of our aggression, so films like «The House That …» cause many rejection.
Why watch a picture that is filled with shocking atrocities of a sadistic hero, scenes of cruelty and violence? This film, like any classic tragedy, serves as a vaccination for us against the virus of our own aggression and violence.
Why do we need to see how Othello strangles and stabs Desdemona? Why should we relive the tragedy of Medea, who kills children, watch the terrible footage of Auschwitz? Being human means being able to process your destructive impulses invading from the unconscious in such a way that they do not cause catastrophic harm to other people.
To do this, our consciousness must be familiar with them and have the strength to melt them into something less destructive — at least into a verbal-emotional discharge. Cursing doesn’t mean killing. The best solution is the expression of these forces in text, music, painting. Living tragedies in our fantasy, we develop a certain immunity to “infections”, gradually acquire knowledge about “viruses”, we begin to better understand what the discharge of aggressive emotions in actions leads to when the material — rage, jealousy, a knife — begins to control a person.
And this painful encounter with the virus of destruction in a fantasy form allows us to trigger the protective mechanism of sublimation, which is akin to psychic immunity. Instead of acting out our aggressive emotions in actions, we form the ability to creatively transform them into products of the art of Life. Thus the instinct for life overcomes the instinct for death.
Tragic stories help us face the Jack within ourselves, our aggressive feelings and destructive desires.
A person who finds it difficult to watch this movie is most likely not afraid of this particular maniac, but of something in himself. The picture has a metaphor for a compartment in the freezer, which Jack cannot open for a long time. And when he opens it, he sees an empty room. There he builds a house of dead bodies, his road to hell. This room is a metaphor for the darkest corners of our soul. Something unknown inside of us, with which we are afraid to meet. Tragic stories help us meet the Jack within ourselves, our aggressive feelings and destructive desires.
But vaccination against aggression is only half of the task that Trier solves. There is no aggressor without a victim, these are two sides of the same coin. Being a victim means either provoking the other to become the aggressor, or meekly refusing to defend yourself. The film is also a vaccine against the state of the victim, dumb, accepting, submissive. This is a protest against the desire of the aggressor to see you as an object, material. And in order to be able to resist, to say no, we need to get in touch with our aggression. Learn to use it for life, not death.
In many reviews of the film, it is noted that Jack is a self-portrait of the director, that he is Lars von Trier, who in one of his interviews said that he kills. To think so is a big mistake. Having a colossal inner strength to look into the farthest chambers of the attraction to Death, unlike Jack, he kills not in reality, but in fantasy, in texts and films. He creates instead of killing or being a victim. And invites the audience to be co-creators of his art. Creatively sublimating the death drive, the director generously shares with us the life-affirming power of art, which strengthens our mental immunity and ability to be human.