I'm one of those fanatical Harmony Korine fans. Like most "fans" of his, I at once love and despise him and his films, though I have to say I still can't really get into KIDS or KEN PARK (though, yes, both are directed by Larry Clark). I normally refer to the "impish little fellow" as HK to friends and family. Who still have no idea who I'm talking about. I wore a shirt with HK on it to the screening of TRASH HUMPERS. To which I brought my girlfriend who until recently had never even seen THE GRADUATE, ANNIE HALL, or HAROLD & MAUDE (this, we've been remedying). Her father is a preacher, and she is from Arkansas. So, I thought, why not bring her along to TRASH HUMPERS?
Soon into the film, my girlfriend grew uncomfortable. She exited with only about twenty minutes left, and when I came out, she was in tears. Though we've been dating for about six months now--a nearly record-breaking amount of time for me--she made it clear that because I had brought her to this movie, it was clear maybe we weren't right for each other. We didn't end up breaking up, but she was so clearly upset by the film--"The only movie I've ever walked out of"--that I couldn't help but smirk and snicker. Everything she said about the film I had heard numerous times before and read in countless reviews of all of HK's other movies. It was really rather humorous to see and hear the emotional resonance the film's viewing had on my girlfriend, and I couldn't help but think--and, let's face facts, KNOW--that this was probably Harmful's intent.
After all, one doesn't listen to Lou Reed's METAL MACHINE MUSIC (or, for that matter, HK's own SSAB SONGS) to bop one's head rhythmically. One listens to this music to see just how far it will go. And, if anything, that's one of my few complaints about TRASH HUMPERS: perhaps it didn't go far... ENOUGH. For those of us not of preacher fathers from Arkansas, at least.
Well, the girlfriend and I ended up calming down, she will stay with me--for now--but is now wary of any movie I might want to show her. I think I could still get her to see GUMMO, but JULIEN is probably out of the question. And she woke up this morning singing "Three Little Devils" (in fact remembering lines I myself couldn't recall) and laughing about certain moments in the film. Again: he succeeded, that HK: he made a film that might have totally disrupted the reality of this young "Southern, Conservative Christian girl" (in her own words), but she can't stop thinking about it, either.
He wins.
HK has perhaps at last made what Lars Von Trier and the rest of the Dogme 95 brethren (HK included with JD-B) attempted a few years back: making the crappiest movie ever. Quite literally. How boring, how annoying, how irritating, how exasperating can a movie be? Perhaps, at last, HK has answered that question with TRASH HUMPERS.
There is certainly a point--more so than the point of that fellow's hat at the Toronto Film Festival--as a moment arises in which HK as Herve (the filmmaker even in the context of the movie itself) gives a speech about the delights and elation of being odd in a far-too-normal world, about embracing the Lumpen, the scatological, the strange, as had the main character of NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND. Of being proud of being an outsider.
The film is indeed a testament to HK's ability--thanks to his family's money and his cause celebre/infant terrible cachet--to literally do whatever he wants. In film and in his life. And even in combining the two as he does in TH (his wife is played by his actual wife, and that baby is probably their own newly born child, Lefty; and, of course, there they are in HK's hometown of Nashville, probably utilizing a lot of the neighborhoods and neighbors in HK's and Rachel's actual lives).
I've always wondered why people like Spielberg and George Lucas don't just release a three-hour long movie of a chair being shot on a digital camera on a tripod. People would see it. People would talk about it. It might revitalize their (artistic) career(s) and would certainly make their money back. But, they don't need to do that. Do they even have careers that need revitalizing?
HK could do it, though. And he would probably be praised up the wazoo, particularly by the Danish, it would seem. (What, are the French just not that cool anymore?) I wonder if he will. Or, if he'll keep making Budweiser and chocolate commercials from now on. Who knows?
But, he certainly made a film that requires viewing for someone who wants to see just how far one can go when there are truly no constraints or rules in one's life, in one's checkbook, or in one's aesthetic freedom. Yes, Warhol and Yoko Ono and Jean Isidore Isou have already done the whole "pure conceptual art film" thing, so Harmony's no pioneer. Certainly not. But, this is no apologia for those who would claim thus there's no need for him to do what he does. Heck, with that logic, we might as well say there's no need for comedies like THE HANGOVER or whatever might be your flavor because, after all, Chaplin and the Marx Bros. have "already done that."
No, HK isn't necessarily a rip-off artist. He's simply working in the IDIOM of the likes of Ono, Warhol, and their ilk, of Duchamp and Man Ray, for goodness sakes. And that's fine. Except for my girlfriend, who'd rather JUST watch THE HANGOVER. But, I guess, that's fine, too. She's got one helluvah great bod.
Soon into the film, my girlfriend grew uncomfortable. She exited with only about twenty minutes left, and when I came out, she was in tears. Though we've been dating for about six months now--a nearly record-breaking amount of time for me--she made it clear that because I had brought her to this movie, it was clear maybe we weren't right for each other. We didn't end up breaking up, but she was so clearly upset by the film--"The only movie I've ever walked out of"--that I couldn't help but smirk and snicker. Everything she said about the film I had heard numerous times before and read in countless reviews of all of HK's other movies. It was really rather humorous to see and hear the emotional resonance the film's viewing had on my girlfriend, and I couldn't help but think--and, let's face facts, KNOW--that this was probably Harmful's intent.
After all, one doesn't listen to Lou Reed's METAL MACHINE MUSIC (or, for that matter, HK's own SSAB SONGS) to bop one's head rhythmically. One listens to this music to see just how far it will go. And, if anything, that's one of my few complaints about TRASH HUMPERS: perhaps it didn't go far... ENOUGH. For those of us not of preacher fathers from Arkansas, at least.
Well, the girlfriend and I ended up calming down, she will stay with me--for now--but is now wary of any movie I might want to show her. I think I could still get her to see GUMMO, but JULIEN is probably out of the question. And she woke up this morning singing "Three Little Devils" (in fact remembering lines I myself couldn't recall) and laughing about certain moments in the film. Again: he succeeded, that HK: he made a film that might have totally disrupted the reality of this young "Southern, Conservative Christian girl" (in her own words), but she can't stop thinking about it, either.
He wins.
HK has perhaps at last made what Lars Von Trier and the rest of the Dogme 95 brethren (HK included with JD-B) attempted a few years back: making the crappiest movie ever. Quite literally. How boring, how annoying, how irritating, how exasperating can a movie be? Perhaps, at last, HK has answered that question with TRASH HUMPERS.
There is certainly a point--more so than the point of that fellow's hat at the Toronto Film Festival--as a moment arises in which HK as Herve (the filmmaker even in the context of the movie itself) gives a speech about the delights and elation of being odd in a far-too-normal world, about embracing the Lumpen, the scatological, the strange, as had the main character of NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND. Of being proud of being an outsider.
The film is indeed a testament to HK's ability--thanks to his family's money and his cause celebre/infant terrible cachet--to literally do whatever he wants. In film and in his life. And even in combining the two as he does in TH (his wife is played by his actual wife, and that baby is probably their own newly born child, Lefty; and, of course, there they are in HK's hometown of Nashville, probably utilizing a lot of the neighborhoods and neighbors in HK's and Rachel's actual lives).
I've always wondered why people like Spielberg and George Lucas don't just release a three-hour long movie of a chair being shot on a digital camera on a tripod. People would see it. People would talk about it. It might revitalize their (artistic) career(s) and would certainly make their money back. But, they don't need to do that. Do they even have careers that need revitalizing?
HK could do it, though. And he would probably be praised up the wazoo, particularly by the Danish, it would seem. (What, are the French just not that cool anymore?) I wonder if he will. Or, if he'll keep making Budweiser and chocolate commercials from now on. Who knows?
But, he certainly made a film that requires viewing for someone who wants to see just how far one can go when there are truly no constraints or rules in one's life, in one's checkbook, or in one's aesthetic freedom. Yes, Warhol and Yoko Ono and Jean Isidore Isou have already done the whole "pure conceptual art film" thing, so Harmony's no pioneer. Certainly not. But, this is no apologia for those who would claim thus there's no need for him to do what he does. Heck, with that logic, we might as well say there's no need for comedies like THE HANGOVER or whatever might be your flavor because, after all, Chaplin and the Marx Bros. have "already done that."
No, HK isn't necessarily a rip-off artist. He's simply working in the IDIOM of the likes of Ono, Warhol, and their ilk, of Duchamp and Man Ray, for goodness sakes. And that's fine. Except for my girlfriend, who'd rather JUST watch THE HANGOVER. But, I guess, that's fine, too. She's got one helluvah great bod.