An itinerary of the mind, that of Jack, who suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder, an intrusive disturbance, a true neurotic compulsion consisting mainly of obsessive thoughts, associated with compulsions that attempt to neutralize the obsession.

Jack explains his syndrome through an accurate description accompanied by animated drawings, highlighting his neurosis, his inexhaustible search for perfection through careful analysis and the study of every detail.

A heated dialogue with his Verge, whom Jack constantly consults, identifying him as a mentor, an intellectual and spiritual reference to whom he can explain the reasons for his search for perfection and his obsession with committing crimes.

Dozens of murders he commits over a span of 12 years, because the serial killer is like an ordinary engineer who technically knows how to kill, but he wants to become an architect, an artist of murder, and the level of creativity he wants to reach to build his house will touch surprising artistic levels.

The recurring videos on Glenn Gould, with his unusual style and repertoire choices, his continuous obsessive search for pianos with rapid and snappy mechanics that respond to the nuances of touch, emphasize Jack's uncontrollable need to find the perfect touch; likewise, the succession of various references to William Blake's engravings, Gothic cathedral designs, Paul Gauguin's paintings, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's writings are seamlessly accompanied by images of military planes, concentration camps, and even visual self-citations of Trier through an anthology collage of frames from his previous films.

His psychoanalytic, introspective journey, his all-too-human confession, thus intervenes with surgical precision on the knowledge of the self and the world and the need to act on bodies, to freeze life (like canned pizzas), expressions, movements, to embalm through them creation and artistic sublimation.

As much philosophy teaches, only art allows for a dual gaze, partial disalienation, the possibility of interrupting the violence of the will to live, the opportunity to produce the surface by virtue of an abyssal depth...

And Trier, with all these citations, images, references, resorts, for the love of the grotesque, the tragi-comic, to the serial killer and his unstoppable search for sublimation, because "the dark forest" of life cannot find "the right way" and the path is so harsh and terrifying that death is only slightly more so. Therefore, only a close relationship with fear and death can allow for the atrocious aesthetic justification of existence, and who better than an obsessive-compulsive serial killer trying to build an artistic monument to death and life can do all this?

And if women and children receive individual attention, for men, as often happens in Trier's films, a single full metal jacket is allowed to enable a budget-saving execution platoon.

Jack is the human being who, better than the species' functionary and Dante's coward, sublimates, builds, and creates obsessively and compulsively even his own self-destruction. And although he comes to awareness, understanding, and confessing his guilt and responsibility, no one listens to him, nor will anyone listen because indifference reigns, apathy commands, cowardice wins, and the process is now irreversible.

Every episode, every murder is like Trier's films: a crime... the act of a psychopathic, serial killer artist who repeats the same crime in different ways, with an obsessive-compulsive search for perfection.

Hoping it is not, Trier's seems like an artistic testament, in which Jack would embody Lars, the murders the filmic works completed with maniacal perfection, Verge his confessional/psychoanalytic path, hell the human condition, art, the only wonderful and tragic consolation.

A very secular, minimally divine but equally spiritual comedy that does not allow for salvation, even if artistically, scrupulously pursued.

After the wonderful tableaux vivants and the last vain attempt at salvation, the explosive and sarcastic song closes the arduous journey:

Go Jack and don't come back anymore!

20-Aug-2023 by Beatrice