how come. (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter Lawnchair Bes
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pointless film? anyone seen gummo?
review:
Gummo
1997 - USA - 88 min. - Feature, Color
In this elliptical ensemble piece, which marks the directorial debut of indie bad boy Harmony Korine, the teens of tornado-scarred Xenia, OH, kill cats, tape their boobies, arm-wrestle, bathe, cross-dress, huff glue, avoid perverts, pay to have sex with retarded girls, lift makeshift dumbbells to the strains of Madonna's "Like a Prayer," fight, cuss, shave their eyebrows, undergo cancer treatment, euthanize senior citizens, and pee on passing cars. A hallucinatory barrage of images and scenarios with little in the way of traditional plot, Gummo has been variously described as a surrealist joke, a visual poem, and a worm's-eye view of white-trash suffering. The main characters include Solomon (Jacob Reynolds), who sells cat carcasses to a middleman who procures them for use at a local Chinese restaurant; his mother (Linda Manz), who teaches him to tap dance while reminiscing about her dead husband; Tummler (Nick Sutton), a mullet-haired local sex symbol; a midget (Bryant L. Crenshaw); a pair of boy-crazy, bleach-blond sisters named Dot (Chloe Sevigny) and Helen (Carisa Bara); a **** with a lump in her breast (Lara Tosh); a group of drunken louts; and Bunny Boy (Jacob Sewell), who wanders the town enigmatically in a pair of long pink ears. In between scenes of these characters enacting their bizarre routines, Korine intersperses impressionistic and quasi-documentary scenes with voice-over narration that ranges from incest memoirs to arty dialogue along the lines of "He's got what it takes to be a legend: He's got a marvelous persona." Shot just outside Nashville, TN, Gummo includes costume designs by Korine's then-girlfriend, Chloe Sevigny, who also plays Dot and who previously starred in the Korine-scipted, Larry Clark-directed Kids. Jacob Reynolds would go on to appear in Getting to Know You, though few of the director's other discoveries have appeared on film since. -- Brian J. Dillard
Although it's not for the weak of heart or the easily offended, this bizarre offering from precocious auteur Harmony Korine certainly is amusing and disturbing in equal measures. Say what you will about a hipster New York director wallowing in the go-nowhere lives of a bunch of dirt-poor rural teens, but these disjointed vignettes have both a traffic-accident magnetism and a surreal beauty. Korine spent part of his childhood in Nashville, near where Gummo was filmed, and his stylistic choices here blur the distinctions between documentary, improvisation, and fictional filmmaking. It's hard to know how to take some of this stuff; the writer/director exerts no discernible point of view beyond a hint of detached amusement. But the film's uncertainty is precisely what makes it so refreshingly honest. The sheer crassness of some of the scenarios -- a boy discovering a lump in the breast of the girl he's feeling up, a retarded teen turning tricks while her brother/pimp tweaks his nipples, and Korine himself jokily propositioning a gay African-American dwarf while recounting tales of being sodomized as a child -- may rankle. The absurd humor and outré imagery, however, should go over well with the urban sophisticates at whom the film is pitched. Korine's muse, Chloe Sevigny, turns in the most indelible of her many white-trash chic performances, trumping even her celebrated role in Boys Don't Cry. Meanwhile, newcomers Jacob Reynolds, Nick Sutton, and Jacob Sewell, among others, make quite an impression with their vérité-tinged performances. Character actor Max Perlich enjoys a brief but memorable cameo, while Days of Heaven actress Linda Manz provides a hilarious tap dancing lesson and a few wonderful maternal harangues. Whether all of this adds up to much is for the viewer to decide, but for adventurous cinephiles, Gummo certainly offered up one of the least-predictable American indies of the late '90s. -- Brian J. Dillard
review:
Gummo
1997 - USA - 88 min. - Feature, Color
In this elliptical ensemble piece, which marks the directorial debut of indie bad boy Harmony Korine, the teens of tornado-scarred Xenia, OH, kill cats, tape their boobies, arm-wrestle, bathe, cross-dress, huff glue, avoid perverts, pay to have sex with retarded girls, lift makeshift dumbbells to the strains of Madonna's "Like a Prayer," fight, cuss, shave their eyebrows, undergo cancer treatment, euthanize senior citizens, and pee on passing cars. A hallucinatory barrage of images and scenarios with little in the way of traditional plot, Gummo has been variously described as a surrealist joke, a visual poem, and a worm's-eye view of white-trash suffering. The main characters include Solomon (Jacob Reynolds), who sells cat carcasses to a middleman who procures them for use at a local Chinese restaurant; his mother (Linda Manz), who teaches him to tap dance while reminiscing about her dead husband; Tummler (Nick Sutton), a mullet-haired local sex symbol; a midget (Bryant L. Crenshaw); a pair of boy-crazy, bleach-blond sisters named Dot (Chloe Sevigny) and Helen (Carisa Bara); a **** with a lump in her breast (Lara Tosh); a group of drunken louts; and Bunny Boy (Jacob Sewell), who wanders the town enigmatically in a pair of long pink ears. In between scenes of these characters enacting their bizarre routines, Korine intersperses impressionistic and quasi-documentary scenes with voice-over narration that ranges from incest memoirs to arty dialogue along the lines of "He's got what it takes to be a legend: He's got a marvelous persona." Shot just outside Nashville, TN, Gummo includes costume designs by Korine's then-girlfriend, Chloe Sevigny, who also plays Dot and who previously starred in the Korine-scipted, Larry Clark-directed Kids. Jacob Reynolds would go on to appear in Getting to Know You, though few of the director's other discoveries have appeared on film since. -- Brian J. Dillard
Although it's not for the weak of heart or the easily offended, this bizarre offering from precocious auteur Harmony Korine certainly is amusing and disturbing in equal measures. Say what you will about a hipster New York director wallowing in the go-nowhere lives of a bunch of dirt-poor rural teens, but these disjointed vignettes have both a traffic-accident magnetism and a surreal beauty. Korine spent part of his childhood in Nashville, near where Gummo was filmed, and his stylistic choices here blur the distinctions between documentary, improvisation, and fictional filmmaking. It's hard to know how to take some of this stuff; the writer/director exerts no discernible point of view beyond a hint of detached amusement. But the film's uncertainty is precisely what makes it so refreshingly honest. The sheer crassness of some of the scenarios -- a boy discovering a lump in the breast of the girl he's feeling up, a retarded teen turning tricks while her brother/pimp tweaks his nipples, and Korine himself jokily propositioning a gay African-American dwarf while recounting tales of being sodomized as a child -- may rankle. The absurd humor and outré imagery, however, should go over well with the urban sophisticates at whom the film is pitched. Korine's muse, Chloe Sevigny, turns in the most indelible of her many white-trash chic performances, trumping even her celebrated role in Boys Don't Cry. Meanwhile, newcomers Jacob Reynolds, Nick Sutton, and Jacob Sewell, among others, make quite an impression with their vérité-tinged performances. Character actor Max Perlich enjoys a brief but memorable cameo, while Days of Heaven actress Linda Manz provides a hilarious tap dancing lesson and a few wonderful maternal harangues. Whether all of this adds up to much is for the viewer to decide, but for adventurous cinephiles, Gummo certainly offered up one of the least-predictable American indies of the late '90s. -- Brian J. Dillard
OP
two things that i loved was when Bullet tooth says: "u should never underestimate the predictability of stupidity"
and when Brad Pitt knocks out the second guy and the picture freezes and the other guy says " Now we are f*****"
well the only thing that bothers me about these kinds of movies is how things just get together by chance.
Funny, I didn't notice the bartender in that part of the movie
Indeed those be good. I could start talking about my favourite scenes, but that'd just flood the bloody thread.
I actually liked that scene where it all comes together. Tony and Avi are driving along, then Tommy chucks Turkish's milk out of the car and it hits them. Borys stumbles around outside and the three clowns come and smack him out. Classic!
Indeed those be good. I could start talking about my favourite scenes, but that'd just flood the bloody thread.
I actually liked that scene where it all comes together. Tony and Avi are driving along, then Tommy chucks Turkish's milk out of the car and it hits them. Borys stumbles around outside and the three clowns come and smack him out. Classic!
