The House That Jack Built

Directed by LARS VON TRIER

Starring MATT DILLON BRUNO GANZ UMA THURMAN

Released 14 DECEMBER

There is something truly perverse about the idea that actors, as an essential part of their job, must be able to convincingly fabricate the process of dying. Some meet with a magnificent fate, while others might slip quietly into the night. And there are those is the latest and possibly greatest film from Denmark’s merry prankster, and it poses the question: if actors have to die, then would that not, by proxy, make the director some kind of mass murderer? It’s a horror confessional riddled with saucy deceptions and grandiose myth-making. This absurdly macabre tale is delivered from the vantage of the analyst’s couch, where actions are loaded with symbols, symbols are loaded with meaning, and meaning is then wiped out with a few carefully delivered bon mots. It is a compendium of grim atrocities which puts faith in the viewer to appreciate both irony and allegory. If it also serves as a meticulously calibrated dynamo for moral outrage, then that’s just dandy too.