Personally, the guy does nothing for me. Even the presence of the great Werner Herzog couldn’t save Julien Donkey Boy.
He wrote Kids and I can’t tell if it’s his writing, or the director’s ability that made the conversations seem so natural, but still interesting. It’s a great movie.
I’ll have to check out these interviews.
poison ivy for the eyes
I haven’t liked anything that he’s done since writing kids, but I might give Mr. Lonely a watch.
Besides, he kicked it with ODB, he’s gotta be cool.
His best work was the script from Kids. I’m also one of the few people who doesn’t downright hate or love Gummo, but rather think it’s ok. Other than that I think he’s pretty mediocre. Mister Lonely was a case of great idea, but horrible execution. The film was terribly hurt from having one of the parallel storylines with Herzog and the nuns being infinitely more interesting than the dull (although it should have been better) one with the impersonators. I think he had or maybe still has some potential, but I’ll never understand what Herzog sees in him.
Why don’t you watch some of his films before starting a thread about him? Korine is deliberately polarizing and has cultivated an image of himself as a “weird guy” so the fact that you picked up on it is not surprising. In the post-Kids haze, I remember dismissing him as some sort of hipster dufus pretending to be an idiot savant until I saw Gummo, a film I admire. His other films don’t work for me but I still find them fascinating.
I find Korrine’s description of his work as Mistakist Cinema http://professordvd.typepad.com/my_weblog/2005/05/may_05_2005_mis.html both intriguing and useful, in ways his actual work isn’t.
(Still trying to get a handle on Textile linking)
I like “Kids” but not much else from him. His stuff, especially “Mr. Lonely”, doesn’t seem interesting to me. But I will thank him for bringing “Husbands” to the Belcourt theatre in my city (which is supposedly where he’s from) since this was the only way I was able to see this movie on the big screen.
I have to say that the useage of music in Gummo is oh-so-good! One of my favorite scenes ever is when the boys (the cat-killers) are rolling down the hill on their bikes, Sleep blaring out in the background, and the sun is setting the scene. Poetry in motion if there ever was any.
So i’d say that his films are worth seeing merely for his talent of mixing, putting together a full scape of both sound and image. It’s very visual.
“Korine is deliberately polarizing "
Indeed. I enjoy his work. I think Julien Donkey-Boy is a beautiful film. Mister Lonely is his most mature work to date.
I saw Kids and thought it was good, but not great. For a while now I’ve been wanting to see Julian Donkey-Boy, and I have a feeling I’d like it, but mostly because of what I’ve heard about the cinematography. So I guess for me he’s kind of hit or miss.
I don’t really like him, but this particular video I found on YouTube is both mesmerizing and beautiful and sums up most of his work:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6CQA4c_eL0
Well, I started the thread to hear other people’s thoughts on whether he is good or not to decide if I should immediatly see his films or not.
love him!
Look out for H Korine’s next film Garbage Humpers coming soon
Trash humpers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! A musical!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Mister Lonely was just so beautiful for about two minutes, and Korine tends to do extremely stylish and stylised work which mostly comes off extremely well, as not being quiet so devoid of narrative as some of the more dull ‘artistic’ filmmakers. Such as Antonioni, and Tarkovsky, for my money anyway… But Mister Lonely then just gets extremely awkward and none of the characters are very believeable or sympathetic, and it’s almost as if they are not meant to be, as they are playing lost impersonators. He can be a truly visionary director and make films that look like nothing else, and you can’t take your eyes off: Gummo and Julien Donkey Boy, for instance. Both are fantastic.
The nuns scene in Mister Lonely, or the Sonic Youth video, starring Macaulay Culkin will give you a quick look into how good he can be, if that’s what’s needed.
http://www.bfi.org.uk/lff/node/517
I’m sure Gummo’s been talked about a lot here, I only saw it for the first time last month and I found it pretty disturbing. I have a high threshold for disturbing films, but this really jangled me. Not just the cat stuff, though that was upsetting, but just the total bleakness of the people’s lives. It’s all very matter of fact, and I don’t think we’re meant to see these people as “freaks” — their oddness is part of their humanity, their hopelessness an offshoot of having been born into this tiny little “dead end” town. Korine can come off as more than a bit of a jerk in his interviews — his way of not taking himself seriously can rub off on viewers and critics, I think. But he’s a real artist, and I think he’ll make at least a few more interesting, challenging films.
I really like Gummo, but then again I have a thing for freaks. But I think it was more of a fluke that I enjoyed this film because Donkey Boy was really, really bad. I don’t find this guy relevant at all.
http://www.indiewire.com/article/exclusive_clip_harmony_korines_trash_humpers/
The only thing about Gummo that disgusted me was how the characters ate. When that filthy kid is eating spaghetti in the bathtub, and then his mother gives him a chocolate bar, but it falls into the disgusting water first, it makes me want to vomit.
Not particularly disturbing on any moral or emotional level, though. In fact, I think the physicality of the movie is what’s supposed to be most disturbing, not the “bleakness” of their lives.
That’s the polarizing effect Korine has on audiences. One side presumes that he’s portraying these characters as freaks, things to be loathed and disgusted by, and the other side presumes he’s gazing upon their humanity in a non-judgmental way.
That’s the thing with Julien Donkey Boy (and Gummo since they’re films practically cut from the same cloth), Julien’s entire family is “unhinged” one way or another but the interesting part (for me at least) is whether Korine is trying to comment on the depravity of man (a society of one’s own making, one which resides entirely in the mind of the individual and not in collective mind of “civilized society”) or on the empathetic nature of the subject?
Who can say definitively? That’s what makes Korine an interesting filmmaker, he doesn’t pretend to know the answers (because really there are none) but relishes in asking the questions and depicting humanity (whatever his end motive is for this) in a realistic and unsympathetic way. If one was to ask me which film offended me more, Forrest Gump or Gummo, it’d be simple: Gump. Why? Because Gump is portrayed so sympathetically that it becomes posturing, it becomes pity, as if Gump is a character that we regard as lesser than ourselves. He is no longer an equal, but a creature far beneath our level of existence. Gummo doesn’t make judgments like this (though I could’ve done without the cat scene…).
I think he’s amazing.
Whats important to remember about him is that he is not concerned with master narrative but rather character, setting, and story, all things that he finds in real life (he doesnt see any logical narrative that plays out in everyday life).
Also, he is interested in creating images that have not been seen yet, something he does very well.
As far as his strange personality on the letterman show etc, it was because he was on a lot of drugs.
A truly great filmmaker who will be remembered in time as one of the greats, right up there with Godard, Herzog, and Cassavettes.
Deckard: I can’t agree completely with your argument here. I think that the visual portrayal a director gives the audience plays a huge role in how we respond. Choosing what to portray can also condition our responses. You seem to be saying that Korine’s lens is completely flat, completely neutral, that he’s just giving us this raw thing directly without influencing the response. I don’t even believe that such a thing is possible, though. There is no completely flat, neutral way of portraying something.
Korine is quite calculating with his camera. He just has the ability to make it seem as if he’s bringing back notes from the ethnological underground.
Deckard- Absolutely right about the posturing or condescension of Gump as opposed to Gummo. Korine says he cast all the “actors” in Gummo from talk shows about glue and paint huffing, and from factories and bars. In a sense I think they intrigued him, or he had some respect for their authenticity.
Bolo- yes, the chocolate bar in the bathwater was gross. It says something about who these people are, though — he probably doesn’t get a lot of chocolate, or he just doesn’t care. Linda Manz was good as the mother, really over the top, I was impressed that Korine got her involved, she’s like indie royalty.
Wampa – drugs or no (and I didn’t see the Letterman show), he comes across as someone who doesn’t want anyone to take him seriously, saying he hates to talk about his films and talking about how he finished shooting half of Gummo in one day in the middle of a blackout. (Which I don’t really believe.) It’s his defensiveness about always being “the noble savage” in a faker’s industry that becomes a bit grating. I don’t feel like I ever much to add or say in regard to one of his films, it just sort of is. Which is difficult to pull off, for a director, to make something that’s just totally itself with nothing behind it, and have it still be interesting or even good.
But Bolo, there’s nothing narratively that judges these characters. I’m not saying that Korine is unbiased (or if I did I should retract it, heh) but, except for perhaps the opening murder in Julien Donkey Boy, there’s no narrative inclination making the audience think one way or another. Sure, the natural human reaction is repulsion, but continued exposure provokes deeper thought and (hopefully) better understanding and eventually acceptance.
“Choosing what to portray can also condition our responses”
It can but then following that line of thought prompts the question: Is the portrayal of anything in literature, film, music, art (even perhaps, a second-hand account of something in a conversation) an unbiased portrayal? Which I would say fundamentally, “no”, but aside from that I don’t think Korine consciously meant to show his characters in a specifically good or bad light, it’s the audience that assigns these labels. For instance, any war film (Cross of Iron comes to mind) could be interpreted as a glorification of violence, but is it really? Is simply the depiction of violence a sign of condolence or disgust?
So, apart from the typical things a filmmaker has to do to make a film (KJ, I wouldn’t for a moment say that he’s just merely filming scenes haphazardly with complete disregard to technique …), I think he presents his subjects (at least with Gummo, Julien Donkey Boy too somewhat but less so) in a fair way.
Again, fair does not mean the same as unbiased or neutral. In my previous posts I say Korine is non-judgmental – this doesn’t mean neutral, flat, and unbiased.
Might we say that Lynch’s weird figures are fabrications with little connection to anything “real”, and that Korine’s specimens have at the very least the presence of found objects? I dunno…
Jake Howell
I haven’t seen any of his films, but he just seems like a weird guy. If you haven’t seen his Letterman interviews, you should check those out.
Your thoughts?