9/5/2023 0 Comments Harmony korine favorite films![]() There’s a charming irony to be found glancing back at the press reviews of the film that surfaced around its original release. ![]() And it’s not a question with a clear cut answer. The question of whether Korine is mocking his subjects, or whether he’s presenting them in the same flawed way as we would do any human character, constantly hangs over the film. The director pays lip service to these prestige qualities while using them to capture innocent transgression, which in turn makes deciphering the film’s meanings (whatever they may be) even tougher. Maybe it’s magical social realism?Īnd just to confuse matters further, Korine leans on the redoubtable (and classically-inclined) talent of the late cinematographer Jean-Yves Escoffier who captures all the rasping degradation on show by mixing ghostly, gliding pans with fuggy, close-quarters hand-held techniques. Where some may see it as a young, affluent oik putting together a Barnum-esque freakshow for the delectation of braying lollygaggers in expensive baseball caps, others could ally Korine’s cosmetically unvarnished mode with work by photographers like Nan Goldin or Diane Arbus. The unyielding and uncomfortable manner in which Gummo grapples with human diversity has also allowed it to linger long in the memory. The term “Gummo-esque” (or variants thereof) is often employed to describe movies with a fascination in locating aesthetic beauty in crumbling, small town landscapes, or those that capture balls-out parochialism with a spare naturalism. Perhaps one sign of the film’s endurance is that it has become a critical shorthand in its own right. Like poking dog shit into the vol-au-vents just as they’re being carried into the society ball, the film retains the feel of a grand prank, like its raison d’être is not merely to steam-up the monocles of the conservative critical cognoscenti, but to force them to claw their own eyes out in abject opprobrium. This strategy in itself is what great art should do – dismantle its true identity, or at least coquettishly obscure it from outsiders. Or whether it’s all just a bunch of grotesque E numbers set to black metal ditties. ![]() ![]() Gummo is a painstakingly (creatively!) repellant heroin chic cine-scrap book which demands its brave viewers question if what they are watching contains any artistic or intellectual nourishment whatsoever. And that is part of its essential beauty. The subject of this piece is Harmony Korine’s 1997 debut feature, Gummo, which – if you love it, loathe it or are indifferent towards it – is a film which appears cheerily immune to the ravages of time. If you can, please keep your gag reflexes in check for just a moment: yes, a term like “cultural relevance” is vague and bland, ushered in by self-appointed commentators or (pardon my French) marketeers to subjectively describe a property they believe is still talked about or beloved in some rarified or influential circles.īut for the here and now, it’s used to characterise a piece of art which has managed to preserve a connection to the modern cultural landscape, but without necessarily trying to. With the sheer volume of films parachuted into our cinemas and released through various, new-fangled viewing portals, it’s some kind of achievement that a movie – any movie – could retain even half-a-microbe of cultural relevance nearly 20 years down the line from its inception. ![]()
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