Miscellaneous Thoughts on Lars von Trier's The House That Jack Built

To call this a review, or an analysis, or anything of the sort would be more than just misleading; it would be deceitful. I have no interest in drawing parallels between The House That Jack Built and Dante's Inferno, nor do I have much to say about the quality of von Trier's film beyond, "It's worth watching." Regardless, I do feel compelled to say something about it, specifically about how it ends.

If you haven't seen it, fuck you, I'm not going to summarize it here. But, that Jack is unable to successfully skirt around the edge of the hell mouth and enter Heaven seems to me to be a refutation of his philosophy. A philosophy which Jack/von Trier is overly eager to explain to Verge/the audience, and a philosophy which--at least at first brush--appears to have quite a lot in common with Arthur Machen's formulation of artistic ecstasy.

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