In his recent review of Frozen River, John Peddie wrote "the trick is not to condescend to the material." Aptly said. My problem with many films about the lower class is "the spectacle of white trash". Frozen River does avoid this and shows its subjects as characters. Harmony Korine's movie, Gummo would be an example of one that does not avoid the white trash spectacle. Korine slightly improved with Julien-Donkey Boy in that he showed a sense of lyricism in the ice skating scenes, but suffered from the freak show that surrounded it and the overwhelming feeling Korine was too busy being weird for the sake of being weird.
Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with film as spectacle. I love the films of Paul Thomas Anderson. With Mister Lonely, Korine seems to have learned how to somewhat manage this. There's a touching scene borrowing from the PTA handbook involving the title track to Iris DeMent's "My Life". On paper, a Michael Jackson impersonator who befriends a Marilyn Monroe impersonator and they go live on an impersonator commune could turn into a freak show. But this time around, Korine has shown warmth, or any human emotion which between his own films and the ones he's written for Larry Clark, I didn't know this was even a possibility. There is a lot of visual beauty and there are visual gags that work well. One example would be Buckwheat giving the pope a bath and another scene involving Werner Herzog and flying nuns. The film gets bogged down in a woe is me attitude from time to time, but a flawed Harmony Korine movie is a vast improvement over past Harmony Korine movies.
Besides for Mister Lonely my other video pick for the week is Snow Angels (David Gordon Green). The teen story is vastly superior to the increasingly annoying one involving Sam Rockwell's turmoiled breakup with Kate Beckinsale. Although that part of the film has a great performance by an under-used Nicky Katt.
Other releases I'm looking forward to this week would be Ladies and Gentlemen the Fabulous Stains and box sets of Max Ophuls and Busby Berkeley.
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1 comment:
harmony korine os such a hard sell to me...unless of course you can assure me that nicky katt is in that one too...because that dude is always on his game.
he only came here for two reasons...and he's almost out of beer.
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