Von Trier??".
When I started doing movie reviews I told myself that I will make reviews right after I saw the movie. But there is an exception to this rule. The first and the last time I saw The House That Jack Built was in Jerusalem Cinemateque in the end of 2018. Roughly 5 years ago. And this review will be made from the memory I have of the movie. I have no problem with the existence of this movie. Freedom of Speech is important. But I am not willing to watch it again. Even though I am kind of a fan of the director Lars Von Trier and the movie is arguably very good. It's just I'm not brave enough to sit through it again.
Then I written two drafts of the film that were about a police investigation into deaths of 8 year olds. I remember another 18 year old helper guy. Or perhaps he was 20 or something. He told me that it would be better if the kids that die would be 18 years old. I thought that it would not be better. Because nobody cares if an 18 year old dies gruesomely. Every single slasher film does that. I wanted people to feel so much terror and so much hopelessness that they would never want to see a movie ever again. I was not familiar with work of Lars Von Trier at the time. So I foolishly assumed that I would make the most intense horror film ever.
Lars Von Trier is an interesting filmmaker. He directs mostly very depressing movies that are very hard to watch. Breaking The Waves is an interesting case study in his filmography because on some weird level this is one of the rare examples of a Lars Von Trier film with a happy ending. Even though you could perhaps argue that the ending is nowhere near happy at all.
It was very nice to have a marathon of Ryan Gosling movies, because I stumbled upon this unique masterpiece. Lars and the Real Girl is a story about a sad relationship. About a man named Lars and his girl named Bianca who is sick and getting worse and worse with every passing day. The twist is, Bianca is actually a live sized sex doll.
The incredible hatred of American people to expressions of utter sexuality in media made Showgirls an easy target for mockery. People perceived it as a rather surface-level soft-pornography, and not a film. And the critics scores of various websites reflect that consensus. Yet I am not one of them. And I think if Verhoeven did the same exact movie, say in Denmark, or some other place in Europe, the film would have received a much greater praise. Just look at Nymphomaniac by Lars Von Trier.
I was avoiding Nope for a few reasons. One of them was because people kept saying that it is very disturbing. It has a scene which I thought was to traumatize me. Now that I actually saw the film I can tell you that Jordan Peele, the director of Nope is not Lars Von Trier and therefor the scene is not actually that bad. To be quite frank, it seems like shooting that scene the way Lars Von Trier would have done it probably goes against the message of the movie.
Yes, the movie is weirdly focused on the sensory images. You would have shots of necks, or knees of pretty women. Or shots of the sea. Seemingly with no apparent reason. I don't know if Michael Mann is a fan of Lars Von Trier, but this movie feels like an action film directed by Lars Von Trier. And Lars Von Trier has explained his editing style as focused on emotion. Where they would erase everything that is not emotionally charged. And therefor keep the audience always emotionally engaged. And combined with the free camera style of directing that he employs, this looks rather interesting.
Writing of Leon is strange. At times it seems like Besson just gets bored with the characters and invents a problem for them out of the thin air. Though there is a narrative structure that comes pretty much from the beginning till the end. Apart from the main love story, there is also a revenge story. But the movie ( especially the director's cut ) is more interested in just observing the two main leads interact with one another. It has pointless ( on the surface ) scenes. Like for example the scene where Matilda gets drunk and starts laughing hysterically. The amount of cringe-inducing stuff in the movie makes me think that a portion of it was written by Lars Von Trier. Though on the other hand, the movie also has a lot of moment of just pure joy. There is a scene where Leon just starts spraying Matilda from a spray bottle and she returns by dropping on him a bucket of dirty water. They are just having fun. And I want that scene to continue forever. I want a 3 hour long version of that scene.
This movie opens with a butt of Nicole Kidman. It ends with Nicole Kidman saying "Fuck" to Tom Cruise. From these two, you can probably already tell what the movie is about. Wikipedia says that the movie is an erotic-thriller. Which is kind of - yes. It's is rather erotic, though not in a way that somebody like Lars Von Trier would do. And it is also very much a thriller.
The direction of the movie is obviously very good. Luca Guadagnino shoots his movies with very precise camera. Nothing too fancy. Everything serves emotional purpose. He likes people to do things that would be in their character, but not necessarily important to the story, like dance. Which makes his editing very intuition-based and less clarity based. Which reminds the style of Lars Von Trier but not quite there. If there would be a scale between chaotic documentary style and a very precise and calculated cinematic style, Lars would be way closer to documentary than Luca. Luca is more in control, but lets a lot of character and intuition through. Which is very interesting.