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September 1997, Week 2

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Subject:
From:
Glen Norton <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Tue, 9 Sep 1997 01:02:33 -0400
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I just saw Gummo at the Toronto Fest, with Korine in attendence. He called
his film a "genre-fuck" and said nothing out there right now interests
him. He called his work "collage".
 
While it's true this film isn't that great, it DOES have some great
moments, which to my mind is high praise indeed considering the style and
randomness of the film. Some things work, some don't. Without giving
anything away, I would say that the best scenes for me were the "dead
rabbit" scene (reminded me of Elmer Fudd -- oh what violence lies beneath
the sheen of popular culture!), the "boxing" scene, and the "wrestling
with a chair" scene.
These scenes work for me because they seem to be at the heart of what
Korine is trying to do, namely, set up a situation and let it fly, with no
rules and without "directing" it somewhere. Everything else in the film
seemed forced and as a result uninteresting. These scenes show what cinema
ought to be more like. To quote from the end of "Le Gai Savior": "This is
not the film that should be made, but if a film is to be made, it must
follow some of the paths shown here."
 
Glen
________________________________________________________________
Glen Norton
Graduate Programme in Film and Video
York University, Toronto, Canada
 
THE PANTHEON: http://www.geocities.com/hollywood/3781
 
"When you see your own photo, do you say you're a fiction?"
                                              -- Jean-Luc Godard
----------------------------------------------------------------
 
On Sat, 6 Sep 1997, Jonathan Takagi wrote:
 
> >     Similar in style to *Kids*, *Gummo* is a cinema verite exercise in
> > which a group of aimless white trash youths are paraded in front of
> > the camera for all to gawk at.  While the 23-year old Korine claims
> > that Jean-Luc Godard is his idol, the film implies that it may
> > actually be P.T. Barnum, as it has dozens of distorted humans to look
> > at, but nothing of much value to say.
>
> I'm always interested when someone is said to respect or emulate Godard,
> however it's always slightly disappointing.  While respected by Gus Van
> Sant and Werner Herzog, I really can't take Harmony Korine seriously.
> Perhaps he attributes his lack/hate of scripts and hate of actors to JLG,
> but his talk of "mistake-ist cinema", where he gives everyone a camera,
> lets them run loose, and fixes it in the editing room doesn't really seem
> very promising.  However, if you like to torture cats, I recommend
> "Gummo".
>
> Jonathan
>
>
 
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