Gummo

D. Hale

at 2:02 am

Gummo can’t really be described.

The simple thing to claim would be that it is the rural version of Kids, which Korine wrote, and many of that film’s preoccupations are here: bored, bleak youth, an ear for dialogue, shock… but it is so much more than that.

The plot stated above doesn’t have much impact on the actual film and what happens is more about the aimless, bleak lives of Xenia’s inhabitants- the very poorest and most ignored of white trash. The two boys who kill cats to sniff glue are not a central focus, the story comes from all angles and from all positions and there isn’t really a protagonist or a narrator, rather a series of short scenes and vingettes that mean little on their own but go together to create a clear depiction of how these people live.

If nothing else Gummo is a set of really beautiful and striking images. A bleached, albino Chloe Sevigny licking her lips seductively and sweeping her hair back in slow motion over Everyday by Buddy Holly; a boy eating spagetti and chocolate in the bath whilst his mother washes his hair with filthy water, or Harmony Korine, the director, as a drunken kid pleading and flirting with a black dwarf.

Along with this are images of complete decay, nihilism and violence that combine to form something unsettling and disturbing. This is because of Korine’s use of contrasting elements to create what he calls ‘surreal realism’ where the natural and odd mix together. As a result we see kids smoking pantella cigars and viciously flogging a dead cat over industrial, retching black metal or discussing Marlene Dietrich as Like A Prayer by Madonna fills the room.

Korine’s refusal to fulfil expectations and make something with definite narrative or plot allows things to evolve with fluidity. Furthermore, the characters are all well-developed and Korine completely refuses to condone or condemn them, so we watch without prejudice. And despite their poor surroundings many of the characters, such as Sevigny’s character Dot, are shown to be charming and witty.

In an interview Korine claimed he wanted to make a film out of everything he loved, one of both the ghetto and the cultured, whether that was Linda Manz or Burzum and other black metal bands or British TV director Alan Clarke- whose style of long, flowing Steadicam shots he borrows liberally from- he didn’t care. He managed to create something of beauty- respect must also be paid to Jean Yves Escoffier whose cinematography is incredible here- where the mood is far more important and valuable than meaning.

When the film was released in 1997 it was met with a mixture of derision and high acclaim, the latter usually from other auteurs like Herzog and Godard.

Janet Maslin’s famous ‘The Worst Film Of the Year’ review destroyed its chances in America whilst it thrived at festivals and in Europe. The majority of this cruel opinion comes from Korine’s use of people who actually have Down’s Syndrome or are retarded or dwarves, or whatever. Critics reasoned that this was exploitation and another part of Korine’s attack on morals and purile desire to shock. He countered that to genuinely have someone in a film with an affliction was much less offensive than hiring an actor like Dustin Hoffman or Tom Hanks to sentimentally portray it. The scenes with the retarded girl talking or featuring Bryant the dwarf are touching and aren’t cruel or vicious and do not single them out: after all this is a film whose entire cast is composed of outsiders, another two do not make a difference. Ultimately, the people in Gummo really don’t care about political correctness; it doesn’t matter to them.

The critics’ reaction was one of knee-jerk decency where they felt to condemn the film because it showed something they were not used to or something that claimed was unnatural or uneccesary. This is nonsense as he is simply showing real life and people like the cast of Gummo- almost all unproffesional- exist and they can’t be denied. Because of its clarity and its unrelenting strangness, all shown in a foreign vernacular, Gummo had to be derided as the work of a talentless enfant terrible- the most misapplied of media terms, they called Tarantino one after the dreadful Pulp Fiction and he was thirty.

What Korine creates is something completely different in the language of cinema, although not without precedent if we consider the Marx Brothers, Terrence Malick, Fassbinder, Alan Clarke and most importantly, Herzog, another great cinematic outsider. Gummo is utterly different and is not afraid to do things that might alienate the viewer, freely mixing grainy 8mm with glossy 35, quality sound with sound that crackles and distorts.

In reality it is the safer alternative to a very sanitised film industry where the independent films of Warhol or Cassavetes have been replaced with dull, noxious industry-produced marketing versions like Donnie Darko or those Wes Anderson films.

Gummo is a film very personal to Korine where he records his own life in Tennessee- the setting for Xenia- that manages to really alter the viewer’s attitudes or show them what true filmaking is. He created a punk cinema: nihilistic, valueless and uncompromising. But the reaction to the film is not unsurprising, after all, no one liked Cassavetes until about ten years after he died, and nobody likes Alan Clarke now.
Rating: 5 / 5

Jenny J.J.I.

at 5:16 am

Well, what can I say, director Korine seem to want to challenge the audience to find the justification for his debut film. Following by his screenplay, Kids, which he wrote at 19, further carves out his relevance in today’s cinema as one weird director. This movie without a story or seemingly without a script can form many reactions. Korine follows various characters in a backwoods town at Xenia, Ohio which was once nearly devastated by a tornado. The lives followed here include mostly adolescents and centers on two boys, Tummler (Nick Sutton) and Solomon (Jacob Reynolds). Solomon’s father was killed during the Xenia tornadoes…and the film follows these boys on various destructive and self-destructive exploits that defy any cinematic validity. This is not film in most ways, it is real life. This “real life” includes glue sniffing, riding dirt bikes, sex and watching such challenging scenes as a man pimping his mentally ill wife who spends her days bedridden and dolled up like a 2-dollar hooker. At the same time we also meet two sisters, Dot (Chloë Sevigny) and Helen (Carisa Glucksman), who want to become stripper’s .Then there is also a boy (Jacob Sewell) who wanders around town wearing pink bunny ears.

Korine constructed his movie as a series of vignettes depicting these characters and various others engaged in disruptive behavior. The episodes range from funny and beautiful to gratuitous and senseless. I found the cinematography of “Gummo” stark, depressing but oddly hypnotic. It’s really the way that the director filmed it (scratchy montage, digital low-quality shootings), and the conversations between the two boys that make the movie compelling and fascinating to watch. . I found the performances, including that of Chloe Sevigny to be honest, authentic and sad.

The movie is filmed like the lives of all the people in the village. There’s no real development, people don’t really do much to improve their situation, and it’s a secluded world they live in. The weird southern-style music and the many unexplained characters like the pink-bunny boy make it a surreal experience. The most memorable scene: was Solomon bath scene…..tell me just how disgusting can a bath be and on top of that while eating dinner?!?

It would be nice to think that, if they do exist, at least we shouldn’t have to look at them… This movie is, indeed, a more gritty and honest version of “Slacker”. They make a good double feature. Of course, after seeing “Gummo”, you will see the cast of “Slackers” Many viewers have despised this film and it’s good that people are offended. Maybe it just means that the movie accomplished its goal.

Rating: 4 / 5

sirarthurstreebgreebling@hotmail.com

at 7:34 am

This Film sums up the “Trailer Trash” lifesyle in America. I first saw this film in a place called “Seabeck” in Washington State , and most of the people who watched the film with me had been saying some of the lines from this film in the preceding weeks that I was there. This is not a glorification of their lifes (which these people seemed to think) and a justification for their deep seated racist beliefs , it is a poinyant tale of hope out of desperation but it gives you the feeling of banging your head up against the wall. With only one redeeming charector people have had a hard time trying to justify the film to themselves. Don’t . Watch this film and make up your own mind. And above all watch out for Gummo’s on bridges over roads.
Rating: 5 / 5