What I Liked: The premise about a serial killer
regaling Death/God/Angel about five of his favorite murders is pretty
good.They have a philosophical
conversation about life, death, love and the meaning of it all.It’s a very old European style of
storytelling like a French or Italian film from the 50’s or 60’s.Nobody makes movies like that anymore (at
least I don’t think so) and it’s a refreshing throwback.
Matt Dillon’s (To Die For) performance is weird.Sometimes he’s manic like Nicolas Cage and
other times he’s downright mean.But I
never found him terrifying which is interesting.He’s a handsome dude that can throw a goofy
smile your way and it becomes hard to take him seriously.I’m putting this in the “liked” category
because some serial killers have the ability to flip between charming and
conceited on a dime and Dillon mostly pulls that off.
Some of the imagery towards the end when it gets abstract
and dream-like is quite stunning.I
can’t really go into what you’re looking at without spoiling it but the shift
to this more extreme art style, especially compared to the very matter-of-fact
pseudo-documentary style the rest of the film uses, isn’t as jarring as you
might think.
What I Didn’t Like: The two and a half hour running
time could’ve been tightened up.Most of
the stories drag a bit with Dillon playing with his victims for too long either
before or after the kill.And because we
have these one on one conversations in between the segments there’s a lot of
material to get through.At least one
segment should’ve been cut.
The editing is erratic. There’s too much use of repeated shots and
moments we’ve already seen throughout the movie.There’s also a lot of closeups and jumping in
time and parts where Dillon holds up white placards with stuff he’s narrating
written on it like in Dylan’s music video for “Subterranean Homesick
Blues”.So really the whole way this is
shot and edited is kind of a mess.
The brutality of the slayings is pretty damn
uncomfortable.Just to give one example
Dillon hunts a mother and her two adolescent sons with a rifle.Later he poses one of the sons like he’s
waving and gives him a Joker wide smile that’s infinitely creepy.He freezes the corpse in a walk-in freezer so
it’ll remain in that position.Probably
the thing that sticks with me the most though is a quick shot of Dillon as a
ten year old snipping off a duckling’s leg and throwing it back in a pond.That got to me more than any of the hostile
stuff towards humans.This level of
bluntness isn’t my cup of tea, however…
Overall Impressions: movies like these need to
exist.I don’t really like this one but
someone needs to push the viewer’s buttons and find out exactly where that line
in the sand we all have is.I’m an
unabashed lover of horror films and a good chunk of my favorites include some
very nasty shit.But the way the
violence is portrayed, the characters, the technical aspects, the storytelling,
etc. is generally entertaining.I don’t
think Lars von Trier (Antichrist) makes entertaining pictures.It’s more like you get through them.This is only the third movie of his I’ve seen
and the one I like the most so far but I’m not a big fan of the guy.His shit is depressing as fuck and he’s too obviously
poking at you deliberately to get a reaction.
With Jack von Trier probably thought he was making
either a satire or the most realistic depiction of a serial killer ever.The tone is hard to pin down because there
are appalling moments like the ones I described above but also silly ones like
when Dillon haplessly tries to convince a woman to let him in her house.He’s failing hard getting nowhere until he
finally flat out promises to give her money if she opens the door.The movie also ends with a cover of Ray
Charles’ “Hit the Road Jack” which completely clashes with the last moments and
everything else you’ve sat through.Again, I firmly believe von Trier is messing with you and daring you to
hate it.
I appreciate the existence of von Trier’s films but
goddammit, I do kinda hate them.
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