FILM REVIEW (2018) The House That Jack Built. Hvidovre: Zentropa

In section XIV of The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Walter Benjamin (2015) argued that painting, different from the movie, ‘invites the spectator to contemplation; before it the spectator can abandon himself to his associations’ (p. 231). Lars von Trier’s movies have always been an exception to Benjamin’s maxim, prompting reviewers/spectators to produce the most varied and polarised associations. This is perhaps because, as once Deleuze (1999) said of Foucault, it is always possible ‘to do things’ with (more than to) von Trier’s works. This certainly applies also to von Trier’s last release, The House That Jack Built, diversely interpreted by critics as a representa- tion of misogynist/misanthropic violence, a sadic and nihilistic portray of our world, an acknowl- edgement of Trump-era chauvinism or a complacent self-reflection of von Trier’s own sense of persecution. What has possibly prompted such a profusion of interpretations is the movie’s unique representation of crime and his criminal, the absence of any ‘good’ and overall an ironic non-story of indistinction and excess which invites an ethical and political reflection on the very idea of violence.