Written & Directed by: Lars von Trier
Nominated for Palme d'Or at Cannes 2018
This film had around 100 walkouts during the screening for the violence, and yet it got a 10-minute standing ovation at Cannes.
This is a serial killer film, this is one of the most disturbing, dark films I've ever seen. This is a study of the extremes to which a human mind can go to. The film is 2 and half hours and I didn't like the ending 20 mins, but apart from that throughout the film my heart was beating fast and there was riveting tension throughout. The reason this film feels so violent is because it's conceived in a realistic way, it feels like what we're seeing is a footage shot on Handicam, the focus going in and out and the handheld feel to it. The eeriness is purely generated out of the way the film is shot more than the violence. The film is so casual about the violence it portrays, it's never sensational about it. We don't see heavy music behind when a murder takes place, the tension is created sheerly through the events that take place.
There is a conversation going on throughout the film as a voice over where Jack is talking to another person about why he kills and how he considers killing to be an art form and how pathetic human condition is and how hopeless life is. The entire duration of the film is a foray into his sick, disturbed mind and I've never been in a character's head this deeply for so long. It feels like he's passionate about killing people like how we're passionate about things. The performance by Matt Dillon is so convincing, his unpredictable nature in his acting as well as in the voiceover.
I'm yet to watch Lars von Trier's other films. He's of course the founder of the Danish Film Movement Dogme 95, along with Thomas Vinterberg. Lars von Trier is known for making films which are controversial, the two volumes of Nymphomaniac, Dancer in the Dark and Melancholia and some people say that every film of his feels like a dare.
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