Lars Von Trier is an asshole. The director would probably admit as much himself. He’s made a career out of being a contrarian and provocateur, of making movies that are aggressive in their nihilism and despair, of revelling in his appellation as cinema’s leading enfant terrible. He’s been obliquely accused of sexual harassment by Bjork during the filming of DANCER IN THE DARK, and he got banned by Cannes for his sympathetic remarks on Hitler in 2011. He performance arts as a jerk for the media. Yet he’s also someone who has been open and forthright about his shortcomings, his well known self-loathing and struggles with depression and anxiety. And in THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT, we find Von Trier in conversation with himself, confronting the worst impulses in his psyche and in his art, all through the guise of a serial killer thriller.   Whether or not that’s something you’d want to subject yourself to depends on your mileage with Von Trier’s brand of confrontational cinema. In short order, … Continue reading LARS VON TRIER BUILDS A PUNISHING SELF-EXAMINATION IN ‘THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT’