"Gummo" (1997) is a disturbing and completely unique work of art by one of the few cinematic geniuses of our time, Harmony Korine. After exploding onto the film scene with his screenplay for "Kids" (written when he was only 22), Korine made his directorial debut two years later with "Gummo," an impressionistic film based on what Korine saw while living in an Appalachia-like small town in the backwoods of Ohio. Apparently he saw a lot there that horrified him, and he brings that horror to you in the most raw, unfiltered way possible.
Throughout the film, I found myself saying, "Harmony Korine is the poet of chaos." There's never been anyone like him, and I suspect there never will be another.
"Gummo" contains a lot of what appears to be documentary footage taken in and around the town of Xenia, Ohio. Interspersed with this are scenes with actors who play the townsfolk. Korine uses unknown or non-professional actors, plus Chloe Sevigny, who has a small but indelible part. Sevigny at the time had not yet become an established actress, having just appeared in "Kids," her debut film. Now of course she's gone onto major acting roles, such as on HBO's "Big Love." For "Gummo," she dyed her hair and eyebrows platinum blonde, and the effect is mesmerizing and frightening. Also unforgettable is the scene where she appears topless with black electrical tape on her nipples, a la Wendy O. Williams.
But the film is mostly focused on the troubled boys of the town, who go around torturing cats and each other. Korine trains his freakshow gaze also on the many people of the town who are semi-retarded. It becomes hard to define retarded (by which I mean mentally disabled in the clinical sense) when so many of the intellectually normal townspeople appear to have chosen to remain at the mental level of a retarded person. Korine appears to be very interested in this social phenomenon, as I have been in my own life. I call it the bizarre phenomenon of voluntary retardation.
Korine blurs the line between the clinically and voluntarily retarded in a disturbing way by including some footage of disabled people. Especially shocking is the footage of a woman who appears to have Down Syndrome playing a garishly made-up prostitute who is pimped out to the local teenage boys by her brother. That is the one scene in the film that brought me to tears. I even put the DVD on pause and sobbed for a few minutes.
Anyone from a lower-class background (such as I) will recognize many of the faces and imagery here. Finally an artist has come along who stares into the face of real-life American horror and doesn't look away.
There are substantial weaknesses in the film, however, particularly in the direction of the boys who play the biggest roles. First is the young boy with the weird hairdo who is pictured in the movie poster; the other is his older sidekick. These inseparable boys are played by semi-trained actors who appear to have no idea what they are doing or what the film is trying to say. They walk around awkwardly, seemingly saying to themselves, "Why does this wacky director force me to wear this ridiculous hairdo?" Nothing they do seems authentic. Either Korine intentionally worked this awkwardness into the film for a distancing effect, to archly differentiate it from the more documentary-like footage, or he just did not know what he was doing with these two actors. I tend to think it was a little bit of both.
Also problematic is Korine's relentlessly negative view. As troubled as the under-class is, it is not 100% screwed up. Korine's view is so skewed toward the negative that at times it seems polemical and limited. In my mind, the hallmark of a great artist is a holistic view. Korine may be capable of that, but he does not exhibit it here. (He does exhibit it in his 2008 near-masterpiece "Mister Lonely," where he has the guts to depict love.)
There is no doubt, though, that "Gummo" more brilliantly captures the horrific aspects of America's impoverished small-town under-class than anything that ever came before it. Highly recommended for fans of true art who have a strong stomach for nihilism.
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