The long-awaited "This Room I Made", with the aura of the Cannes Film Festival, has disappeared from our vision since May. Only recently has this movie really revealed its true face of Lushan, how did "This Room I Made" achieve the halfway time of the screening, and more than half of the audience left the scene? The reason given by the departing audience was that it was too bloody and brutal.
Las von Trier has never been a director who caters to a mainstream audience, but he has always inadvertently led the way. From his 1984 debut film Elements of Crime, to 2003's Dogtown starring Nicole Kidman, to May's "This House I Made," each of his films has ushered in a big discussion about art and human morality, and he himself is often in the middle of public opinion.
Las von Trier's blessed land is the Cannes Film Festival, so he also attaches great importance to this film festival, and whenever a new work is completed, it will inevitably be brought to Cannes to face the scrutiny of the world. Even though he attached so much importance to Cannes, he was blacklisted in 2011 because Russ von Trier said in an interview that "I have some understanding of Hitler, and even some sympathy for him."
We all know that Hitler was the initiator of the Second World War, the representative of anti-humanity, and the common enemy of the peace-loving people of the world. So Ras von Trier's words drew condemnation from world opinion, and Cannes, under pressure, had to declare that "Las von Thiel was an undesirable person in Cannes and banned him and his works from entering Cannes indefinitely."
In the seven years between 2011 and 2018, Russ von Trier was out of the public eye, with only three works of "Female Addicts" 1/2 and "This House Is Made by Me". It wasn't until this year's Cannes Film Festival that Las von Trier was able to return to his "old place", this time with his work "This House I Made".
To understand "This House I Made", we must first understand the directing style of Russ von Trier, who has been experimenting with various special film styles in recent years, the most distinctive of which is "Dogtown", an experimental film with a house, which Ras von Trier calls "fusion film", which is a high combination of literature, film and stage play.
"This Room Is Made by Me" is more like a "fusion film" in a more complete sense, and you will be bombarded by literature, painting, music, stage plays, comedies, documentaries, and stop-motion animation during the movie-watching process. It's a cinematic style like never before, and it's one that will blow your mind, the "artistic fusion" of the highest intensity that Russ von Trier is after.
When the Cannes Film Festival was screened, the most surprising news for us was that more than half of the audience left the scene in the process of watching "This Room Is Made by Me", and they scolded and grinned when they went out, "This is not a movie!" This is the show off of the slayers! I vaguely remember when Director Jiang Wen's "Let the Bullets Fly" was first released, a famous host also left angrily after watching it for a long time, writing on the Internet that "the dirty words, bloody scenes and sexual innuendos that filled the whole film tortured me, an ordinary audience, to leave the table early."
How similar the history is, what happened to "Let the Bullets Fly", and now "This House Is Made by Me" has also encountered. And we all know that "Let the Bullets Fly" has been proven to be an absolute movie classic, in which the dirty words and bloody scenes are all in the service of the film as a whole. So, what kind of movie is "This Room I Made", and will it also become a classic?
The story of "This Room Is Made by Me" is actually very easy to understand, the beginning of the film is a dialogue between two people, in which the male protagonist Jack is an engineer, we all know that many engineers have obsessive-compulsive disorder, unfortunately Jack is not only an obsessive-compulsive disorder, but also a cleanliness. The other interlocutor we can tell from the back of the film is Virgil.
Yes, it was Virgil who, in Dante's Divine Comedy, led Dante through hell, purgatory, and heaven.
Jack's obsessive-compulsive symptoms are very serious, he once drove into a car breakdown of the young girl, the young girl is a familiar "I guess you will not throw me this weak woman here, right?" ”
Jack accepts the young girl's request and drives her to repair the jack. But who knew that this woman was still a poisonous woman, and had been chattering since she got on the bus, in addition to joking that Jack was like a serial murderer, but also very contemptuously saying, "You are so provocative, you will certainly not be a murderer." Jack was completely enraged and used a jack to kill her.
It was such a coincidence that Jack gained a great sense of relief, and his obsessive-compulsive symptoms had weakened. As he describes in the movie, "A man walks under a street lamp, and when he comes to the bottom of the street lamp, the shadow is the smallest." "After each of Jack's killings, his obsessive-compulsive disorder will be alleviated, and there will be a sense of satisfaction in his heart. As he moves on, his sense of satisfaction will slowly wane and his pain will slowly increase, forcing him to complete the next killing, thus completing his inner liberation.
After each of his killings, the film inserts clips from the famous pianist Gould, and the murderer Jack believes that his killing behavior, like Gould's piano playing, belongs to a kind of art. Like those famous murals, it's all art. So in the movie, we will see the director suddenly cut into the internationally famous painting, representing jack's inner feeling of "artistic sense".
The poisonous tongue woman who called for help on the side of the road became the first wronged ghost in his hands. It is also the first event of the film, the whole film is divided into 5 events by Russ von Trier, which is very similar to "Female Addict", and the independent events make up the complete film.
The second incident is that Jack lied and cheated into the door of an old woman who lived alone, and when he entered the door, he was fierce and had a hint of neurosis the whole time. This passage is the most humorous segment of the whole film, because Jack suffers from cleanliness, and when he drags the body away, he thinks back to the crime scene again and again, and again and again worries that it will leave blood to make the scene less perfect.
So he took great risks and returned to the scene again and again, looking through the carpets, furniture, and wall paintings again and again to check whether he was clean. When he threw the body into the grass, but accidentally let the car door clamp the rope that bound the body, he drove and pulled the corpse all the way, and the whole road was covered with blood left by rubbing the ground.
But an unexpectedly heavy rain helped him eliminate all the evidence, and even Jack himself laughed at his luck.
In the third incident, he took his wife and children to "hunt", he was a hunter, and his wife and children were prey. With his gun in his hand, he killed them one by one like a game, placing their corpses with those of crows, forming the most perfect "spoils" in his heart. This paragraph is also the most unacceptable to many viewers, and it is anti-human.
In the fourth incident, he killed his girlfriend, cutting off a part of her proudest body in an almost torturous way. The fifth event he wanted to learn from Hitler, during World War II, the Nazi army, in order to save bullets, would often tie many people together at the same time and solve more enemies with the least number of bullets.
Jack emulated nazi soldiers and wanted to execute multiple people at the same time with a single bullet. But because the bullet is not made of "all metal shell", he did not hesitate to expose his whereabouts, which attracted the police to track him.
At this time, the Virgil who has been talking to him in the film appears. Virgil leads Jack into hell, to purgatory, and on the way catches a glimpse of heaven, which is Jack's favorite scene of the hometown man mowing the grass on the farm, which is his favorite place, and Jack has said that he loves to hear the uniform breathing of the men when they cut the grass.
Jack, a vicious serial killer, still walked into the entrance to hell that he had created. When Virgil pointed to a broken bridge and said that across the bridge was another world, which I had never seen before, Jack, an obsessive-compulsive, was determined to go over and have a look, so he climbed up the cliff, and underneath the cliff was the rolling fire of hell.
Jack was ultimately unable to reach the other side of the broken bridge, and he fell into the abyss, into the magma that had already devoured thousands of evil souls, leaving only a negative shadow.
With his exquisite approach to directing, Ras von Trier injects fresh elements into the film, including the direct introduction of gould's playing fragments, rather than just as background music. He directly inserted a large number of paintings, making the film more profound in the exploration of art.
The original intention of "This House Was Made by Me" was that Jack wanted to build a beautiful house in a vacant lot he inherited, but he started construction again and again, overturned and rebuilt again and again, and he could never find the appearance of his inner house. Just like many artists, looking for their own inspiration, but exhausting their lives and not getting it.
When Jack gained artistic inspiration by killing people, when he pasted the film negatives superimposed with death into the shape of the house, he truly understood that what he enjoyed was not the process of building a house, but the pleasure of killing.
Jack keeps committing murder but is still lonely inside, and his favorite Gould is the "Lonely Trilogy". His inner emptiness cannot be released, and he can only find a sense of existence through murder, and while he is escaping the police pursuit, he feels empty because no one can catch him.
He finally succeeded in building the art he wanted—the house he built from corpses. In the house, there is the entrance to hell. He personally opened for himself the entrance to hell, the end of art— destruction. In Jack's eyes, death is the most perfect art.
The film climaxes when Virgil takes Jack on a tour of Hell, traveling through different areas and seeing the scenes depicted in Dante's Divine Comedy. As viewers, we are already fascinated by these extremely creative and imaginative scenes, especially when the famous painting "Dante and Virgil Crossing the Styx" appears in the picture, "This Room is Made by Me" is enough to go down in history.
Virgil and Jack's slow motion as they walk in Purgatory and cross the Styx Together express the sense of religion that comes to the fore. Suddenly, the world became quiet, and Jack saw out of the window, which was the paradise of his dreams. But Virgil told him "it's Elysium there and we're not qualified to go over".
What awaited Jack could only be a place darker and more cruel than purgatory and hell. That's the bridge of desire. Coming to the broken bridge, across the bridge is beyond hell, and Jack wants to cross the bridge, just like all people who have done bad things, and finally want to escape from hell.
Virgil, like a skilled worker, told Jack, "Although many people have tried it, I don't recommend you do it." He knew in his heart that no one could stand that temptation. And those who want to climb the past, without exception, will all fall into the rolling magma. At this point, Virgil's leading path is over.
The first half and the second half of the film seem to have a strong sense of separation, but they are closely related to art. Throughout the film is art, whether it is piano playing, or Gothic architecture, or church frescoes, or the final journey to hell, representing the most perfect art in the world.
That's how Russ von Trier completed one of his most artistic films. This is a film that can make you understand the true meaning of art, and it is a film that no matter how imaginative the editing is, you can't help but say "This is the movie!" ”