Review of Gummo (1997) by Nathan F — 09 Nov 2008

Harmony Korine's Gummo is a film hand-tailored for experimental cinephiles; custom-made for anyone who likes to describe themselves as an 'artist.' It is proper that the film, which postdates a small-town tornado, would then be likewise volatile; an assortment of swirling vignettes ranging from uncomfortably recognizable verite to uncomfortably exploitative spates of freakshow profligacy. Korine renders his Sodomite settings with a repulsive glee; his knack for filmmaking derives from his ability to visualize images of his ragged out-there Ohioan settlement as absolutely grotesque; each scene is aggressively messy and triple-coated with layers of nauseating smut. Perhaps the most obvious, and effective, of these images is when one of our few recurring characters, Solomon, takes a 'bath.'.

Submerged up to his nose in grease-black bathwater; every object in the room slabbed with rust and dirt; he rises to eat his dinner--a plate of spaghetti, looking three-days old and dry, and a glass of milk, wisely refracted through a pink glass to the color of Salmonella; his mother lacquers his hair in cheap shampoo; if this is not enough, Korine has scotch-taped a piece of bacon to the wall. The reality distorted here is scurillous; maculate; if Korine's goal is to insure us that the storm that touched down here took with it all semblance of pleasure, beauty and optimism, then he has succeeded--it is impossible for us not to understand: this world is ugly.

But once we understand this--that we're witness to a garish kaleidoscope of Gothic, unpleasant weirdness--is there anything left for us to get? It's hard to argue there's something subliminal here; which might explain why some of Gummo's best sequences are simply brief photographic slideshows; "Hey, Look.".

Korine's Gummo epitomizes a discouraging trend in independent filmmaking; a what-you-see is what-you-get panache which synonymizes artistic courage with the inclination to displease to audience; that Korine casts Jacob Reynolds as his lead is telling--it is safe to assume that his acting chops were less influential in his casting (this is not the world's most difficult role) than his oddly marsupial face. Korine positions Reynolds alongside other dysmorphics and dysfunctionals with sideshow spectacle; a gay black dwarf; not one, but two, mentally-retarded girls; several Southerners killing time killing cats. These images are included for their perverse oddness; indicating an archaic circus-mentality which lures viewers in by exploiting their innate attraction to otherness; but while ringleaders never claimed to be after anything but a profit, Korine has somehow managed to present the same schtick and call himself a genius for it; mistaking tastelessness for audacity is a common error, but indicative of a juvenile mindset. Those filmmakers who have explored backwater strangeness before, surrealists like Lynch, haven't passed up opportunities to show a redneck prostitute his mentally-disabled relative to teenagers due to lack of artistic boldness, but because they had other things supporting their storytelling--narrative, characters, subtlety, writing. Korine has none of these things; the only way to distinguish himself is to go where no man has gone before, whether it's beneficial or not. Showing a retarded girl talk to a plastic doll; showing two teens turn off the respirator to someone's grandmother; doesn't affirm any kind of dramatic message or imagination--it affirms a lazy fascination not unlike the rambling nihilism of Solomon and Tummler, our two protagonists (if there are any), who are just as aimless in life, and just as content indulging in the brutish amusement of hitting a cat with sticks. When Korine shows us a back-porch conversation between a family about 'niggers,' it seems so unabashedly and unnecessarily forced that its only possible excuse for inclusion is that the director knew that his ambition for an all-inclusive quilt of offensiveness would be incomplete without it.

Korine should be admired for what he is good at--a flair for the picturesque; at least the desire, however misapplied, to utilize film as art; the occasional (though one might think random, or lucky) vignette that works effectively. In one, the film's best thirty seconds, Tummler stands on a table fervently delivering a stand-up routine; the jokes ("The other day I found a parking spot--so I told my wife to go and buy a car!" "A man came up to me and said, 'I haven't eaten for 3 days,' and I said, 'Force yourself!' Another man came up to me and said, 'I haven't eaten for a week!' I said, 'Don't worry, it tastes the same!'") are intelligent--and show a side of Tummler that we haven't seen; perhaps this kid isn't soulless. Korine never returns to this though; Tummler trudges zombified through the rest of the film.

The credit sequence, after we watch a boy in pink bunny ears take a piss of a bridge, turns to a young boy flexing his muscles--a image usually symbolic of shallowness; of people who have nothing to say, and in turn rely on surface and biceps for attention--it's remarkably apt, and if the rest of Korine's images said as much as this one, he might as as good as he thinks he is.