Post by Capo on Jan 15, 2007 21:03:33 GMT
Julien Donkey-Boy
Harmony Korine 1999 USA
A schizophrenic lives with his brother, who aspires to be a wrestler, his pregnant sister (father unknown) and stern, military father.
Korine's second feature is a gut-wrenching one, using a very raw, unpolished aesthetic (it was made under the Dogme manifesto) to portray a mentally disturbed family with originality and aggression. There is something unbearably intimate about the way the hand-held camera, saturated in colour and natural lighting, captures the performances. If "honest" is a buzz-phrase in film criticism, then let us rejoice in how this film is so stunning that no words seem appropriate. It is often hilarious, not least of all the scenes with Werner Herzog as the father who asks one son to wear his dead mother's wedding dress so that he can dance with him/her, and ridiculing his other son's attempt at poetry as "artsy fartsy". There are simple visual gags, too, with Herzog watching telly wearing a gas mask, and drinking medicine from a sandal. But the tragic undercurrent lingers most, stemming from the deadpan document of people deemed different and disabled: a blind girl tells of how she used to think she could see, and finds much pleasure in having her feet tickled; an armless man and amateur card magician plays a drumkit with his feet; an albino raps with such intensity and lyrical brilliance that even Korine can't resist playing the whole scene out without any cuts.
Harmony Korine 1999 USA
A schizophrenic lives with his brother, who aspires to be a wrestler, his pregnant sister (father unknown) and stern, military father.
Korine's second feature is a gut-wrenching one, using a very raw, unpolished aesthetic (it was made under the Dogme manifesto) to portray a mentally disturbed family with originality and aggression. There is something unbearably intimate about the way the hand-held camera, saturated in colour and natural lighting, captures the performances. If "honest" is a buzz-phrase in film criticism, then let us rejoice in how this film is so stunning that no words seem appropriate. It is often hilarious, not least of all the scenes with Werner Herzog as the father who asks one son to wear his dead mother's wedding dress so that he can dance with him/her, and ridiculing his other son's attempt at poetry as "artsy fartsy". There are simple visual gags, too, with Herzog watching telly wearing a gas mask, and drinking medicine from a sandal. But the tragic undercurrent lingers most, stemming from the deadpan document of people deemed different and disabled: a blind girl tells of how she used to think she could see, and finds much pleasure in having her feet tickled; an armless man and amateur card magician plays a drumkit with his feet; an albino raps with such intensity and lyrical brilliance that even Korine can't resist playing the whole scene out without any cuts.