FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1997. All Rights Reserved.
Gummo
This is not a film for everyone. In fact, it is hard for me to imagine if it is a film for anyone at all. Gummo is the 'creation' of the 23 year screenwriter, Harmony Korine, who along with director Larry Clark, molded the excellent docu-drama about street life in Seattle, "Kids."
Here, Korine holds the reins as director and attempts to fashion another art piece out of the life surrounding the community of Xenia, Ohio, a small town that never recovered economically or psychologically, from a devastating tornado that struck some twenty years ago. One brief look at the appalling folk that live here and one can surely see why. This film is an attempt to create art by someone who understands the film medium, someone talented enough to create provocative and realistic reflections of the grimy underbelly of life. But 'art' without any semblance of humanity is not art it is exploitation, perhaps even pornography.
This is a movie about bored, restless kids who have nothing better to do than torture and drown cats for pleasure and/or profit. If they're not selling cat meat to the local restaurant, they're sniffing glue, pissing on passing cars, or taking pot shots at cyclists wit their beebee guns. The older, more 'mature' folk in the community pass their evenings walloping their kitchen furniture into pancake shapes. Fun community that Xenia, Ohio.
"Gummo" has your obligatory dosage of youth-in-angst-talking-about-suicide-in-a-police-padded-cell, devil metal music and black magic worship scenes. Though Korine as director manages to remain objective about his subject manner throughout the film, I found myself continually asking when the wraith of God would strike again with a stronger tornado and completely obliterate this sorry excuse for civilization in the heart of American suburbia.
If directory/writer Korine had big Hollywood budgets to work from, we might be able to convince ourselves that the cats these kids have strung up and are whipping into oblivion are robotic. If not for the fact that four of the characters in this film are paid actors, the most open minded might be able to convince themselves that this is a true to life depiction of middle American life and as such, has some redeeming value. However, as spontaneous as the scenes may be, they are still controlled and manipulated by a dangerously self-deluded sadist.
Is this movie compelling? Is it entertaining you ask? I'd rather take my pleasure jumping from the top of the world trade center.
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