Korine
first broke into movies writing the nihilistic screenplay for Larry Clark’s
Kids (1995) – which to me remains the best film Korine has ever been involved
with. Korine wrote about the world he knew in New York – bored teenagers who do
nothing but drink, do drugs, have sex and beat people up. It is a shocking film
– but it should be. Korine also wrote the screenplay for Clark’s Ken Park
(2002), although he wrote the screenplay years before the film was made, and
had nothing really to do with making the movie. As that film has never really
been available in North America, I have not seen it.
When
Korine was 23 years old, he made Gummo. The film won prizes at the Rotterdam
and Venice film festivals – and earned raves from filmmakers as varied as Jean
Luc-Godard, Gus Van Sant and Werner Herzog. The film was also pretty much despised
by American critics – and it’s easy to see why. Gummo is an undeniably ugly
film. Korine’s style in the film is harsh – the film was shot on video, and
looks every bit as ugly as that sounds. The film has no real plot, but centers
on the desperate residents of Xenia, Ohio – a town still affected by a
hurricane that hit it in the 1970s. It seems the only people left in town are
psychopaths and the mentally ill. Through the course of the movie, we’ll see
two teenage psychos murder a lot of helpless neighborhood cats (in a scene near
the end, they’ll hold one of these cats up to the audience, in one of the more
deliberate attempts in the movie to shock). We’ll also see such things as
eating a disgusting candy bar that dropped into dirty bathwater, men beating a
folding chair for some reason, Chloe Sevigny pulling duct tape off her nipples,
the long forgotten Linda Mantz (Days of Heaven), doing a soft shoe routine in a
filthy basement and a woman with down’s syndrome pimped out a prostitute.
I have
no idea what ANY of this adds up, or what it is supposed to add up to. Critics
rightly called out Korine for doing things simply for shock value – he has done
that in every movie so far, and from what I hear about Spring Breakers, I
expect more of the same. But they also call out Korine for what they see as him
“faking realism” – since he cast professional actors, and shot the movie in Tennessee
rather than Ohio.
I don’t
quite get this complaint. Surely, if Korine wanted to fool us into thinking
that there really was a town as miserable as the Xenia, Ohio he shows, he could
have easily shot the movie in Ohio and used non-professional actors. Had he
done that, the reviews probably would have been a lot nicer – they would have
praised him for capturing the real pain and suffering with an unblinking eye.
But I have to think that Korine knew that going in – and that part of his point
is that he is faking the realism. What’s his point? I admit, I have no idea,
but I think he probably has one. I didn’t much like Gummo, have no desire to
ever see it again, but it is unquestionably the film Korine wanted to make.
His
best film as a director was his sophomore effort – julien donkey-boy (1999). In
that film, he uses the rules of the then en vogue Dogme 95 filmmakers from
Denmark (led by Lars von Trier), although as Roger Ebert points out in his
review, Korine does admit to cheating on several aspects – since all props were
supposed to be found on scene, and he imported a can of cranberries from a
grocery store. And how Chloe Sevigny isn’t actually pregnant, but just has a
pillow under her shirt (but said pillow, was found on scene.
The film
isn’t much prettier than Gummo was, but it is much better – because as ugly as
the characters may be, they are actual characters this time around, unlike
Gummo, and they actually do grow and change in certain way during the course of
the film. The film’s title character is played by Ewan Bremmer, who is
schizophrenic, and hence the movie certainly has an unreliable point of view.
What actually happens in the movie? What does he just imagine?
Werner
Herzog plays the title character’s father – an outwardly cruel man, who
belittles his daughter – Chloe Sevigny – in scenes that are shocking, funny and
sad all at the same time. The film still has moments in which Korine is trying
to shock the audience – a miscarriage and everything that comes after – and yet
it is built around its characters. The film is undeniably a challenging one –
not completely successful, perhaps not successful at all – but once again shows
Korine going for broke. Again, I don’t know if I would describe julien
donkey-boy as a good movie – I certainly cannot think of too many people I
would actually recommend the film to – but once again, it is precisely the film
Korine wanted to make.
It took
Korine 8 years to follow-up julien donkey-boy with another feature (there was a
nervous breakdown in between) – and that was Mister Lonely (2007) – a film I
completely loathed. The film was about a commune in the Scottish Highlands,
that is inhabited by celebrity impersonators – oh, and it also features nuns
jumping out of an airplane with no parachutes and landing, unscathed, on the
ground. My blog wasn’t running at the time, but I was writing reviews and this
what I had to say about the film then:
“The commune, which is not the
paradise that Michael hoped it would be. Marilyn’s husband is Charlie Chaplin,
but he is hardly a lovable scamp, but a cruel, manipulative man. Abraham
Lincoln swears constantly. James Dean, for some reason, tells jokes. Sammy
Davis Jr. tap dances. Madonna doesn’t really do anything. The Pope and The
Queen sit around. Shirley Temple is adorable. Buckwheat is still a racist
stereotype. The Three Stooges screw everything up. And, for some reason, Little
Red Riding Hood is running around.
“I’m sure Korine has a
point to make in all of this somewhere. And I’m sure it has to do with the
culture of celebrity, which has become a sort of religion for some, although it
remains empty, just like the nuns falling out of the plane. But watching the movie,
I couldn’t help but think that it was all a waste. Diego Luna does a decent
Michael Jackson –especially when he’s dancing – but the rest of the
impersonators don’t even come close. Are they not supposed to? Why are they
living the way they do? What do they get from it all? And where are Buckwheat’s
parents, and how does a kid that young even know who Buckwheat is? And why the
hell are the eggs singing? (yes, there are singing eggs, no, I have no idea
why).”
No, I
still have no idea why there were singing eggs, and I still have no idea
precisely why Korine made this film – what made him feel like he had to make
this film. What is clear, as it was in Gummo and julien donkey-boy is that
Korine doesn’t think much of our modern day culture – he views it as shallow,
and he has a point. But why he felt the need to address it like he does in
Mister Lonely, I have no idea. Still, I will say this for the third time, although
Mister Lonely is, to me, a god awful film, it is still the film Korine wanted
to make.
Which
brings us to Trash Humpers (2009). The film made my “worst” list in 2010 (when
it was released), and nothing has changed my mind on that. In a way, Trash Humpers
can be viewed as a sequel to Gummo – this isn’t a film about teenagers doing
destructive things, but old people doing destructive thing. But they aren’t
really old people – they are people like Korine and his wife – in deliberately
bad old age makeup and masks. As the title suggests, they quite literally spend
much of the movie humping trash. Unless they are giving a blow job to a tree
branch. The film was shot on VHS, to make the whole thing look even worse than
it otherwise would. Mission accomplished.
I hated
Trash Humpers. It was boring and repetitive in the extreme, and I’m sorry, I didn’t
get much out of the experience. And yet, I still said the following two things
in my extremely negative review:
“While
I somewhat admire the fact that Korine made precisely the film he wanted to
make - I cannot really say that it is an experience I ever want to go through
again”
And
“Korine
is a real filmmaker, and a real artist. To me, julien-donkey boy, with its
weird performances and style remains his best film. He is a unique filmmaker,
with a strange vision of the world around him.”
You’re
sensing a pattern here, and you’re right. To bring this post back to its title,
the reason why I will never miss a Harmony Korine film, even if he hasn’t made
a film I’ve really liked, and certainly not a film I would ever want to watch a
second time is simple – Korine is one of a kind. He is a real artist and he
makes precisely the films he wants to make. So many films today are
interchangeable. And too many filmmakers don’t take any chances whatsoever.
Korine constantly takes chances, and no one else would make the films he makes.
There is a reason for that, of course, but Korine doesn’t care what that reason
is. He doesn’t follow trends – he just makes whatever the hell he wants.
That is
why I am so fascinated by Spring Breakers – and why I cannot wait to see it.
Yes, Korine is making a movie with movie stars – James Franco – and former Disney
stars – Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens. And yet, I also know that the film
itself, no matter what it’s like on the surface, will still be Korine’s. That he didn't just cast movie stars for commercial appeal, but because he's got something else up his sleeve (not having seen the film, I have no idea what that is - but I cannot wait to try and figure it out). He is
a real artist – even if I haven’t much cared for his art so far. But every
artist has detractors. I hope Spring Breakers will be the film I always thought Korine could make. He's certainly kept me waiting awhile.
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