Harmony Korine

Started by Rudie Obias, February 02, 2003, 08:54:10 PM

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NEON MERCURY

Quote from: Pubrick on November 17, 2005, 10:52:07 PM
there's nothing wrong with hating Gummo. that wasn't the problem.


true...my post was 'bout kids

Quote from: Pubrick on November 17, 2005, 02:19:13 AM
RedVines you are Small Town Loner/Finn/Quoyle/filmcritic
i forgot Sydney/Insomniac. you know there's something wrong when NEON can discuss a movie with more maturity than you.
Quote

:oops:


Alethia

Quote from: mercury on November 17, 2005, 10:41:49 PM
owning kids/gummo is like owning a coldplay cd in that you think its cool and hip but its fake and makes you look like a poser when you pimp it....

it hurts, it physically hurts me....

brockly

Quote from: eward on November 18, 2005, 12:24:04 AM
Quote from: mercury on November 17, 2005, 10:41:49 PM
owning kids/gummo is like owning a coldplay cd in that you think its cool and hip but its fake and makes you look like a poser when you pimp it....

it hurts, it physically hurts me....

that comment is too hilarious to offend

Pozer

Quote from: mercury on November 17, 2005, 10:41:49 PMowning kids/gummo is like owning a coldplay cd in that you think its cool and hip but its fake and makes you look like a poser when you pimp it....
Hey that's not true! I own a Coldplay cd and... wait, no that's about right.

Alethia

i can tell you right now, i did not put gummo (or kids) in my collection thinking anything along the lines of cool/hip

w/o horse

I am pretty sure that cool kids don't want to be seen with Gummo.  I mean I think Coldplay I think frat boys and people with bumper stickers.  I think Gummo and I think the drug crowd and John Q. Artist.

Also, Gummo is a pretty shallow movie.  Fascinating and beautiful, compelling and divisive, but shallow and detached.  However popular it is right now, I'd expect it to be about the same or less popular fifteen years you know.  What is there to discover about it, what is there to sink in, what is going to explode.  There's not a hidden element to Gummo, nothing is missing from a viewing experience.

This comes from a fan of Korine.  Some thread somewhere I was talking about how much I enjoy the vignette style narrative and I cited Gummo as an expemplorary piece, I think it's great.  But it doesn't take care of itself.  Korine himself talks, I think on the JD-B DVD, a movie which I enjoy more, about how when he watches a movie it is single scenes that stick out for him.  So, what's he do, he creates movies that are nothing but those scenes again and again.  Good times, good movie, next please.
Raven haired Linda and her school mate Linnea are studying after school, when their desires take over and they kiss and strip off their clothes. They take turns fingering and licking one another's trimmed pussies on the desks, then fuck each other to intense orgasms with colorful vibrators.

ono

neon, I'm replying just for you.   :kiss:

First, KIDS is shit, that isn't the issue.  Gummo is a good film because it's real.  Now, it may not be the reality you're accustomed to, but that doesn't make it any less valid.

Earlier, I talked about filmmaking being a way to convey the perception of reality the filmmaker has, and how well the film is accepted is an indicator of how valid the film is.  The only problem with Gummo is it doesn't care about the audience.  It's one of those unique films that exists, audience or not (Ebert made this comparison with another film -- I forget which one he said did this), and that's not really a bad thing at all.  It employs a fly-on-the-wall, cinema verite style, stripping away any artifice, so it really does shock, and is really more "slice-of-life" than anything else in recent memory.

What sealed my appreciation for Gummo was when my friend brought up his experience watching it.  When he was 19, he lived in a trailer park, and this kind of thing, for him, was reality.  The cat killings for money, the bugs on the wall, the dirty bathtubs.  Except in his case, it wasn't these specifics.  He took me to visit his old trailer park once, and we were out there at his old place, about 2 AM, and saw two girls stumbling down the street, arguing with each other, probably about some guy.  If it's not one thing, it's another.  This is trailer park life, like it or not.  Yes, people do live like this, and we're rendered so complacent by media and luxury that it's hard for us to conceive anything different.

All art is self-indulgent.  Check that... all good art has to be.  Buffalo '66 shines for a few reasons, and they are all moments that weren't essential to the story.  Amelie is all about the how.  Magnolia is memorable for the voice of Ricky Jay in the opening to set things up, and the closing to knock 'em down.  For the audacity PTA had to have everyone sing all at once, even Big Earl, who was slipping into his final coma at the time.  To say a film is self-indulgent is to stamp it with the very reason why it works as art.  It has heart, it tries to put itself out there, and it takes a moment to say something and pull away from plot just for one moment.  I'd rather take bunny boy kissing those girls in the swimming pool in the rain, or Sevigny in julien donkey-boy strolling through that field of grain, singing, than most anything Hollywood would have to offer through manipulation.  Those moments are more subtly moving without even trying to be anything more than what they are: slices of beauty in a life that is overall, from a distance, so incredibly ugly and unappealing.  Korine, with that said, doesn't mock his characters -- he loves them.

w/o horse

I could just repost my last post, which you dismissed for whatever reason.  But let's dig, no?  I'll just say right now that this isn't a hostile post, as I've learned that I come off as so in disagreements.

I find your post biased and unreasonable:

1.  I am from Bellbrook Ohio.  Which is next to Xenia.  Which is where the film is based, although not where the film was filmed.  And Korine never went to Xenia last I heard. Still, I know how well he did capture the spirit of a dilapidated town, which was quite well.  You are right to say so.  But you seem to be praising the film for capturing the reality of the situation when it doesn't say anything at all about its characters.  We know as much about them as you know about two girls stumbling down the street, which, you know, you couldn't write one sentence on without making an assumption as to their mindset.  Then, and I don't understand this at all, you state the indulgence of art, but you give manipulation over only to Hollywood.  Are you fucking kidding me that all films aren't manipulative?  If Korine isn't trying to be anything more, why the bunny suit in the first place?  Why the scene in which the bunny gets shot.  Why the scene with the man in the car.  Why the prostitution scene.  Why these scenes ono?  I agree he loves his characters, and indeed that the film is slice-of-life, but completely disagree that all artifice has been stripped away and that the film the not manipulative, which would be to say that it is without objective.  There's a fuck of a lot more to these people than the silly 'shocking' things they do.

2.  "First, KIDS is shit, that isn't the issue.  Gummo is a good film because it's real."  Why dismiss one and then praise the other for the same reason the former connects with so many people.  Your friend who lived in a trailer home and saw a lot of his life in Gummo, I could let you talk to twenty kids who saw a lot of their life in Kids.  Hell, it's not even a giant leap forward from the drug addled lives of kids in Ohio I can assure you.  Kids has the benefit of a big city setting.  What was the script concept?  Clark asked Korine to write a script about his daily life.  Anyway I don't want to make this a big argument, I don't like Kids either, but these sentences next to each other were confusing for me.
Raven haired Linda and her school mate Linnea are studying after school, when their desires take over and they kiss and strip off their clothes. They take turns fingering and licking one another's trimmed pussies on the desks, then fuck each other to intense orgasms with colorful vibrators.

Alethia

so am i the only one who really likes KIDS as well?

private witt

Quote from: eward on November 20, 2005, 10:50:29 AM
so am i the only one who really likes KIDS as well?

Nope.  It's a great film.  I don't think Harmony could have done it better.  Sometimes I wonder if people are turned off from Korine because it's too realistic and they can't place it in any context they're previously acustomed to.  Classicly, DEEPER TRUTHS are attained from the character's inner thoughts that are shown to the viewer in several different ways in films like Bladerunner, In the Bedroom, Boogie Nights, The Thin Red Line, Apocalypse Now, The Vigin Suicides.  But in Korine's films, the characters do not ever think for one minute that their lives or the world that surrounds them is as fucked up as the viewer is made to feel it is.  To say that Korine is shallow because his characters appear shallow is shallow.  As far as social realism, I had thought that term was coined to refer to social labor, but maybe just showing the plight of the everyday suburbanite is just as valid as showing the plight of the everyday working man.  The term works for me.  Anyway, nothing's cooler than applying names of turn-of-the-century painter movements to turn-of-the-century film movements.
"If you work in marketing or advertising, kill yourself.  You contribute nothing of value to the human race, just do us all a favor and end your fucking life."  ~Bill Hicks

JG

Quote from: onomabracadabra on November 20, 2005, 05:57:49 AM
To say a film is self-indulgent is to stamp it with the very reason why it works as art.  It has heart, it tries to put itself out there, and it takes a moment to say something and pull away from plot just for one moment. 

I really like what you said here.  Not enough films do this. 

mutinyco

Quote from: eward on November 20, 2005, 10:50:29 AM
so am i the only one who really likes KIDS as well?

No... I'm sure Gary Glitter and Michael Jackson do too. I just wouldn't go announcing it...
"I believe in this, and it's been tested by research: he who fucks nuns will later join the church."

-St. Joe

ono

"Theraflu is a hell of a drug."  No codeine, but it gets the job done.

Quote from: JimmyGator on November 27, 2005, 10:47:14 AM
Quote from: onomabracadabra on November 20, 2005, 05:57:49 AM
To say a film is self-indulgent is to stamp it with the very reason why it works as art.  It has heart, it tries to put itself out there, and it takes a moment to say something and pull away from plot just for one moment.

I really like what you said here. Not enough films do this.

thx u :kiss:

Quote from: Losing the Horse: on November 20, 2005, 06:44:06 AM
I could just repost my last post, which you dismissed for whatever reason.

I didn't reply to that first post because I didn't find much to reply to.  No harm, no foul.

QuoteBut let's dig, no? I'll just say right now that this isn't a hostile post, as I've learned that I come off as so in disagreements.

I find your post biased and unreasonable:

Haha.  Sorry.  That made me laugh.  First, what opinion isn't biased?  Second, I don't see how I'm being unreasonable in basing my opinions on subjectivity.  It's amusing to read that you say you aren't being hostile, because I would've perceived that as hostile if it wasn't the case.

Quote1. I am from Bellbrook Ohio. Which is next to Xenia. Which is where the film is based, although not where the film was filmed. And Korine never went to Xenia last I heard. Still, I know how well he did capture the spirit of a dilapidated town, which was quite well. You are right to say so. But you seem to be praising the film for capturing the reality of the situation when it doesn't say anything at all about its characters. We know as much about them as you know about two girls stumbling down the street, which, you know, you couldn't write one sentence on without making an assumption as to their mindset.

In this case, Korine's vast brushstrokes are not dedicated to just one or two characters, though we are given an entrance to the world through the eyes of Bunny Boy, Solomon, and Tummler.  The point is not deep characterization.  The point is the feeling of nihilism conveyed through these people who are more archetypal than characteristic of anything too specific.  The film finds ideas that fit "here," "here," and "here" because it doesn't get too specific.  Its detached, bird's eye view works because that is its goal.

QuoteThen, and I don't understand this at all, you state the indulgence of art, but you give manipulation over only to Hollywood. Are you fucking kidding me that all films aren't manipulative? If Korine isn't trying to be anything more, why the bunny suit in the first place? Why the scene in which the bunny gets shot. Why the scene with the man in the car. Why the prostitution scene. Why these scenes ono?

Why any scene?

Seriously.

You're now questioning that bird's eye view that works so well now just to question it.  One of Korine's goals is to get to a point where he can make a film where he captures reality nonstop.  Cinema verite at its purest for, without any subjectivity.  Just what happened, and that's it.  He's talked in the past about wanting to make a film with all hidden cameras.  Just film experiences and string them together into some sort of narrative, if at all possible.  So why any scene indeed.  Simple: because, to quote the painting in Claudia's apartment, "it did happen."

QuoteI agree he loves his characters, and indeed that the film is slice-of-life, but completely disagree that all artifice has been stripped away and that the film the not manipulative, which would be to say that it is without objective. There's a fuck of a lot more to these people than the silly 'shocking' things they do.

The objective is simply to show you this life.  These things.  That they do happen.  And it does so without commentary, so as to let the viewer draw his/her own conclusions.

Quote2. "First, KIDS is shit, that isn't the issue. Gummo is a good film because it's real." Why dismiss one and then praise the other for the same reason the former connects with so many people. Your friend who lived in a trailer home and saw a lot of his life in Gummo, I could let you talk to twenty kids who saw a lot of their life in Kids. Hell, it's not even a giant leap forward from the drug addled lives of kids in Ohio I can assure you. Kids has the benefit of a big city setting. What was the script concept? Clark asked Korine to write a script about his daily life. Anyway I don't want to make this a big argument, I don't like Kids either, but these sentences next to each other were confusing for me.
Simple.  The eye.  My favorite film critic is Ted Goranson, a prolific writer on IMDb.  He also has his own website, http://www.filmsfolded.com/  He goes into a lot of theory in his criticisms about two things: folding in films (that is, shifting in time, in perspective, and in the roles the actors play), and also the point of view of a film.  That is, the eye.  The camera is the eye.  Editing is blinking, as put forth in theory by Walter Murch.  The eye is the way in which we view the world.  The camera is the way in which we view the filmmaker's world.  So everything is in the placement of the camera and how it moves, how it is used.  PTA, some would say Scorsese, Gondry ... all masters of the camera.  Korine is an up-and-coming master, as he has created visuals never seen before.  And it's not just the novelty of seeing these people.  It's the extra layer of beauty he has uncovered in observing unobtrusively.  It's Sevigny in Gummo, jumping on the bed, her nipples taped.  It's her again in julien donkey-boy, walking through the field of grain.  Or it's Bunny Boy swimming in the rain with those girls, kissing them.  It's all about tone.  Clark, on the other hand, takes a leering approach to his work.  You feel dirty watching it, wondering if it's okay.  You're aware of the reality of it, but you're also aware that something is amiss here.  It just doesn't feel right.  The point he has is a valid one, and needs to be made, but in the hands of a more skilled filmmaker, one who knows how to use the camera better than he does.

Alethia

i agree about clark, KIDS aside, the guys a fuckin hack....all that is great about KIDS to me is undoubtedly Korine's.....i wonder what the film would have been like had Korine directed it as well

NEON MERCURY

haha, new title suggestion:


IS EWARD THE ONLY ONE WHO THINKS HARMONY KORINE IS A GENIUS?







-ONO, YOUR EBUTTLE WA AGREAT READ THOUGH