shit.
The standard by which all films should be judged.
For example;
Tokyo Story: continuity provided by sake bottle.
Gummo: continuity provided by bunny boy
& etc.
dp
Moderated
Gummo is a singularity.
^ Thank God
I think it’s one of the best films ever made.
I probably won’t return to this thread to read people telling me why I’m wrong, so if you plan on doing so I wouldn’t waste your time.
How noble of you.
I watched it this year (2010) for the first time.
It made an enormous impression on me. I think it’s a great film.
Note that I didn’t ask you whether you find its milieu salubrious or charming, nor whether you’d want to hang out with any of the people involved.
If you were raised in the American South, and intimately know the kind of people seen in this film——- it might even be the case that your own family comes from these people——- then you will be extremely interested in GUMMO.
If you weren’t, and you’ve never met people like this is your life? Then I don’t expect you will have a huge interest or stake in what you see in GUMMO.
Just sayin’.
Think of movies which are set in the American South. Say, a movie like MY DOG SKIP or STEEL MAGNOLIAS or THE PRINCE OF TIDES. The reality is, if you were to go to the American South today, you’d probably meet a LOT more people like the GUMMO crowd, than you would the sentimentalized characters of those other movies.
So, just by squarely addressing the reality of this milieu, and not sentiment, Harmony Korine has already scored a real artistic victory, AFAIAC.
Now whether you like his MTV-flavored sequences and meditations is almost neither here-nor-there.
Thanks for your insightful response Alexandra.
I liked the bacon taped to the bath’s wall. And the scene when the girl shaved off her eyebrows made me cry.
What else could you want from a film?
@ ANTHONY
It is indeed true that, here in the semirural American South, there are long stretches of time…. in which there is simply not a goddamned thing to do at all.
So you tape bacon to the wall and shave off your eyebrows.
That point was well-made in the film, I thought.
hi, sorry for being mean, but gummo makes me cranky.
Absolutely putrid
I liked when it came out on video – it was a sensation – this obscure, unpleasant art movie that everybody HAD to see, even really mainstream people. For some reason it really seemed to catch peoples imagination at the time.
Gummo was about a town in Ohio (not American South) that was devastated by a natural disaster (tornado?). I know someone who grew up (and subsequently escaped from) this town. She said that many of the sequences weren’t unrealistic…
Xenia, Ohio—F-5 tornado in April of ’74. Then an F-4 in 2000.
@ HOPELESSLY ADDICTED
Set ostensibly in “Ohio”…. but, I for one, wasn’t fooled for an instant. Not a single Ohio accent was heard in the course of the film, for one thing.
Its locations and actors (save for the star leads) were all from Nashville, Tennessee and environs, and I intuitively recognized it from frame one.
It’s a Southern movie, no question.
That’s true, David, it does strongly resemble the South that I grew up in.
Gummo greatly appeals to me and I’ve never been to met anyone from the South. Julien Donkey Boy appeals to me and I’ve got no relation to anyone who’s schizophrenic.
What I like about Korine’s films is that even though these people are so messed up, you can still feel for them. Most of the characters are really only trying to express love for one another, while the available tools for this expression have been fucked up. The bathroom scene with the mother being nurturing in a totally insane way is the best example of this.
bitchin soundtrack
Were we to understand that Bunny-Boy was schizophrenic?
I don’t think so, David . . . I don’t see much that, symptomatically, would suggest schizophrenia. Just lonely and eccentric, I’d say.
This is a film all my hipster friends love.
it’s a shitty flick btw, dont waste your time.
Open your mind and don’t be prejudiced against hipsters. Hipsters are a vital part of the multicultural team rainbow.
The children are cool
They don’t raise fools
It’s an American dream
Includes hipsters too
David: Julien Donkey Boy was Korine’s next film, about a schizophrenic guy and his family.
Oh, OK__
-This is a film all my hipster friends love-
Only a hipster befriends hipsters.
Shocked
Discuss.