Why did it strike you as immature and try hard? I see the meta reading there but it struck me as Trier grappling with the inability to ever effectively punish the truly wicked and that their acts essentially take on a form of artistry in and of themselves. The “negative” of failing upward seems an integral piece to the fabric of the film.
I found it as involving, affective, thoughtful and self loathing as anything Trier makes. I admire his fearlessness in plunging head on into material that many would deride as being too extreme or too pretentious. I think he earns the territory with artistry and a type of cynical authenticity.
I mean, the flick starts with a protracted conversation about a “broken Jack.” His sardonic sense of humor is fully in place. What’s not to love?
Von Trier so frequently balances on the extremely thin line between interesting provocation and cynical manipulation, real thoughtfulness and pointlessly punching holes in walls, pure emotions and likely trolling, deliberate pretentiousness and not so deliberate pretentiousness, that it can be hard to explain why one film of his works for me and another one feels like a big put on.
I think what it amounts to is that beneath all of the belligerence on the surface of his films, that you can find small details that add a depth to the experience. For me The Antichrist isn't defined by dick cutting as much as it is the sound of acorns rolling down a roof. Melancholia less about the Apocalypse, and more about a bride late for her wedding and stuck in a limousine. Dancer in the Dark, not simply emotional torture porn, but an eliptically edited document of life lived in this small town. These smaller moments allow me to believe in his more ridiculous and baroque and overtly malicious ones. It provides a balance, sort of like the joy of filmmaking you can sense in John Waters earlier efforts make his carnival barker tactics to get people in seats seems less about simple attention seeking, and more about a camaraderie between outcasts.
The House that Jack Built doesn't lend me any moments of poetry, or any slyly observed human behavior, and certainly none of that joy of filmmaking. It seems a movie made by a man who is too tired to really give his rage and depth, and is just presenting a dried up husk of a thesis regarding good and evil, the dubious nature of artists like him. I just found it really sad (in a not good way) along with frustrating and kind of empty. I do think there were some occassional moments of black humor that kinda worked, but it wasn't enough. Like I said, I still like watching what he does, even when what he does isn't working for me. I can't say I wasn't intrigued by Jack. And there was even a moment
SPOILERS where he begins to talk about how he's never managed to build his house, he's obviously been too busy distracted by his 'art', and in that moment I could see something genuinely sad being sad by Von Trier, maybe taking stock of his own life. But then when it became 'you just have to use the material you have at hand, build a house with that', what happens was just so painfully on the nose, and stupidly juvenile, it undid that moment of emotional clarity and became....dopeyEND OF SPOILERS
I'm sure, as you have done, you can piece together his little dirge of a jigsaw puzzle and make a conclusion of what it is saying. I don't think he made the movie for no reason beyond offending people. He's a more interesting artist than that, even at the worst of times. But it doesn't mean that pieces being put together are of much interest to me on their own. They don't carry any weight. There really wasn't even enough power in them to offend me. I really can't see it as being anything but one of his worst films.