|
Alphabetic Index
|
Ratings Index
|
Web Resources
|
Alphabetic Index
|
Ratings Index
|
Web Resources
The setting is Harmony Korine's fictional town of Xenia, a neglected grid of streets somewhere in Ohio. The neighbourhood looks bruised, decades after havoc was wrought by a tornado. For the next generation, there's little that's constructive to do and no guidance as to what not to do. Hence they make their own entertainment. Solomon (Jacob Reynolds) and Tummler (Nick Sutton) cruise the neighbourhood, armed with 'BB' guns, searching for stray cats. The kitty corpses are sold to a local supermarket. Bunny Boy (Jacob Sewell) sits on a bridge, rocking and smoking. Dot (Chloë Sevigny) and Helen (Carisa Bara) tape their nipples down, hoping to enhance protrusion.
This is, essentially, the structure of Gummo. A sequence of vignettes, weakly connected by location and recurring characters. What Harmony Korine, in his directorial debut, doesn't provide is a plot, a familiar narrative thread. Instead Korine attempts to construct a collage of Xenia through fragments, or at least a picture of one side of Xenia. To his credit, individual scenes do encompass a certain realism, in the sense that kids act in a way that seems strange to adults. The missed step comes when these scattered moments fail to reinforce one another, to gel into a meaningful sum. They remain uncoupled, disturbingly hypnotic in their ability to drag you along but still somehow pointless.
The saving grace is that, astonishingly, Gummo steers clear of being an exploitative freak show. The misfits on display certainly lend themselves to such an end but Korine evades this fate by shooting from the inside out. He's not gazing upon these lives from some moral high ground, judging their lack of compass, but is instead squatting down beside them. The problem is that despite Korine's sympathy, it's difficult for the audience not to laugh at the characters, at their stupidity and weirdness. By being a pretend documentary, the film almost asks you to behave in this way; you can't escape the artificiality of the scenes no matter how hard they try to be fly on the wall. Gummo makes the audience a voyeur by constantly raising the shock stakes, then takes no responsibility for the completed article. It's this total absence of a message that makes Gummo a baffling movie.
Yet, at times, a surprising warmth and intimacy reward the viewer. As many of the cast members are non-professionals, picked through unusual looks or because they happened to be in the right place, there is an openness to their acting. In the same way that people willingly expose themselves on TV talk shows, the performers take on the spirit of Gummo. Because there are no authority figures around to define what's right and wrong, no thought has associated guilt. Hence a strong sense of innocence pervades the acting, as if everything that happens is experimentation or discovery. Jean-Yves Escoffier's photography aids this process through extensive use of videotape, casting a camcorder light on otherwise repellent situations. This feeling is quite at odds with the subject matter.
In essence, Gummo is peculiar and appalling, a shredding of human decency. There's nothing to it, any substance or insight of lasting impact. You keep watching through a gory fascination, emotion akin to the buzz that comes from high-speed car chases. This form of amusement has no designs to enrich your existence, the flickering images have no nobility. When the credits roll, you wonder why you bothered to stay. Yet despite this, Gummo is no simple fiasco. Korine knows what he wants to achieve and stays the course with fidelity, marshalling the forces of imagination and sensation with some skill. The upshot is that while Gummo cannot hope to appeal to the bulk of the film-going public, it redeems itself by staying true to Korine's vision.
|
Alphabetic Index
|
Ratings Index
|
Web Resources