Without a doubt, Harmony Korine's GUMMO is one of the worst
movies I've ever seen......but also one of the most beautifully made,
and purposefully realized. It's like a car crash: twisted, ugly,
sickening in so many ways, yet utterly mesmerizing and
enveloping of the viewer's senses. And it shows that beauty exists
in the very simplest, mundane and awful of existences.
Imagine going home and hanging out with any of the guests after
a taping of The Jerry Springer Show and you know what you're in
for with this film. Racist, lethargic, uneducated, ugly, morally
corrupt, poverty-ensconced folk from a town that barely cares they
were hit by a tornado a few years previous, and doing nothing to
rebuild the lives they never had. Gut-wrenchingly real, and
unfortunate. But every individual presented in the course of the film
is so utterly entrancing in the way they look, to what they say and
do, to the way they build up and interact in a story so sparse it
reads as documentary, yet so surreal you pray it's complete fiction.
It's not: This is the "American Heartland" splayed open in full.
Ugliness aside (and the film is nothing if not ugly, both in visuals
and emotion), GUMMO is a brilliant piece of filmmaking regardless
of what most might say to the contrary. Korine has taken the same
inexplicable lack of moral grounding that was so precisely
captured in his writing on KIDS (1995) and brought it down to a
level of realism so believable that one cannot help but be
negatively effected in watching it (anyone with a conscience that
is). He seamlessly casts and directs performances out of
complete amateurs, alongside professional actors (Chloe
Sevigny, Max Perlich), so as it becomes almost impossible to
discern them from each other in the mix. Composing a stirring
melange of grimy yet richly colourful scenes; film, video and still
photo snippets; a tossed salad of death-metal, silence and folk
music; clear and intense cinematography, and doing so with such
succinctness as to seem as if we were living in that world
ourselves, praying to get out. If you are bored watching GUMMO it
is because Korine has made you bored, if you are grossed out by
GUMMO, disgusted, enraged, sickened, or perversely tickled
somehow it is certainly because the director knew how and what
to do to get you there. A considerable feat for any artist, let alone a
23 year old.
I wouldn't recommend this film to very many people I know, and at
times I wonder why I watch it again myself, but I am truly thankful it
exists. GUMMO slapped me in the face and made me see the
banality, desperation and repugnancy that some people choose or
are forced to live with, and yet also made me realize that some
beauty can be found even in that. One beautiful rose does not
make a whole garden, but life continues to abound despite it.
8/10. So far ahead of it's time we may never catch up.
movies I've ever seen......but also one of the most beautifully made,
and purposefully realized. It's like a car crash: twisted, ugly,
sickening in so many ways, yet utterly mesmerizing and
enveloping of the viewer's senses. And it shows that beauty exists
in the very simplest, mundane and awful of existences.
Imagine going home and hanging out with any of the guests after
a taping of The Jerry Springer Show and you know what you're in
for with this film. Racist, lethargic, uneducated, ugly, morally
corrupt, poverty-ensconced folk from a town that barely cares they
were hit by a tornado a few years previous, and doing nothing to
rebuild the lives they never had. Gut-wrenchingly real, and
unfortunate. But every individual presented in the course of the film
is so utterly entrancing in the way they look, to what they say and
do, to the way they build up and interact in a story so sparse it
reads as documentary, yet so surreal you pray it's complete fiction.
It's not: This is the "American Heartland" splayed open in full.
Ugliness aside (and the film is nothing if not ugly, both in visuals
and emotion), GUMMO is a brilliant piece of filmmaking regardless
of what most might say to the contrary. Korine has taken the same
inexplicable lack of moral grounding that was so precisely
captured in his writing on KIDS (1995) and brought it down to a
level of realism so believable that one cannot help but be
negatively effected in watching it (anyone with a conscience that
is). He seamlessly casts and directs performances out of
complete amateurs, alongside professional actors (Chloe
Sevigny, Max Perlich), so as it becomes almost impossible to
discern them from each other in the mix. Composing a stirring
melange of grimy yet richly colourful scenes; film, video and still
photo snippets; a tossed salad of death-metal, silence and folk
music; clear and intense cinematography, and doing so with such
succinctness as to seem as if we were living in that world
ourselves, praying to get out. If you are bored watching GUMMO it
is because Korine has made you bored, if you are grossed out by
GUMMO, disgusted, enraged, sickened, or perversely tickled
somehow it is certainly because the director knew how and what
to do to get you there. A considerable feat for any artist, let alone a
23 year old.
I wouldn't recommend this film to very many people I know, and at
times I wonder why I watch it again myself, but I am truly thankful it
exists. GUMMO slapped me in the face and made me see the
banality, desperation and repugnancy that some people choose or
are forced to live with, and yet also made me realize that some
beauty can be found even in that. One beautiful rose does not
make a whole garden, but life continues to abound despite it.
8/10. So far ahead of it's time we may never catch up.