...Harmony Korine was that rarest of things in the latter half of the 90s, a real trouble-man, a challenge to the industry in the media spotlight, much like Orson Welles in the early 40s. What that media attention might have done to him at such a young age is unclear, but one thing is clear; something kept him away from filmmaking for years. Was it his aborted "Fight Harm," which could have been a great physical comedy? Or did the controversy over his work and his place in the industry get to him? Who knows? It doesn't matter anyway, because he has a new film out, one that looks to follow the same themes as his other films, but in a softer tone...
Korine grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, where he encountered many people and places that would have a huge influence on his later artistic output. In his teen years he and the family moved to New York, where Korine became immersed in skate culture and movies. Then he met the photographer Larry Clark, who asked him to write a screenplay based on his experiences with the youth of the place. The result was KIDS, a film written by Korine and directed by Larry Clark. It was hugely controversial, and Korine was thrust into the media spotlight. Utilising his fame and success, he decided to make his feature debut, using the contacts he'd made after KIDS, and the people and places he'd encountered during his Nashville upbringing...
The result was Gummo, an epic collage of life in a place called Xenia, Ohio in the aftermath of a tornado. It was shot in and around Nashville, in authentic squalor, with a huge cast of mostly non-professionals. The film is a startling masterpiece, about a forgotten people and culture lying in the sub-conscious of America. It is energetic, audacious, tender and human. There are sequences of hypnotic beauty and power, as when a frail kid in bunny ears kicks at the fencing separating him from the busy flow of traffic in a bridgeway over a motorway, or when a blonde teenager lies on a sofa staring up at us in a sexually inviting way, her eyes filled with longing and desperation, set to the distorted sound of children singing Buddy Holly's "Everyday." The caused a storm of controversy for it's depictions of depravity; cat-killing, the suggested sex between a teenage boy and a down-syndrome prostitute, etc. Yet these allegations are unfounded, as most scenes are entirely suggestive; the film is not exploitative in any way. It also gained acclaim and derision critically; Janet Maslin of the New York Times calling it "the worst film of the year," and on the other end Bernardo Bertolluci calling it "the one revolutionary film of the 90s." Both these comments may be compliments to Korine's purpose as a filmmaker. So after making one of the great debuts of cinema, what came next for Korine? 
His next project came fast, something deeply personal to Korine; based on the life of his Uncle, a schizophrenic. It was made under the tight restrictions of the dogme95 manifesto, shot entirely on handheld and with threadbare production design. In some ways, Julien Donkey-Boy was a huge departure from Gummo, using a minimal cast and muted tone, yet with it's improvisatory quality and theme of isolation it is in the same way. It seems far more technical than Gummo, and sometimes this is distracting. Yet it is also highly inventive and perhaps contains more emotional gravity than Gummo by focusing more tightly on character and story. It is beautifully acted, with a cast comprised of both non-actors (a blind ice-skating girl and a black rapping albino), and actors (Ewen Bremner, whom Korine admired in Mike Leigh's Naked, Chloe Sevigny, his then-muse who had large parts in KIDS and Gummo, and Werner Herzog, a huge admirer of Korine and his Gummo). It is much harder to watch than Gummo, yet had a strong emotional pull on me. It switches from calm, to shocking, to frustrating, to sad, sometimes in the same scene. It has a kind-of cold, icy beauty to it, relying on a visual palette of blues and greys, ranging from somber to luminous, from Julien stooping over the body of a child he just murdered, to his lover/sister practicing ballet in her room. What's most interesting in this film is the way the family functions. Korine used hidden spy-cameras to film the reactions of bystanders to the behaviour of Julien and his family. To those looking in from outside, this family is odd, freakish, and dysfunctional, but Korine takes us inside, and asks us what's so freakish and odd about these people. They function outside the realm of social order, yet ultimately function as a family, only in a way we're not used to. This bears much thematic similarity to Gummo, which is very much about a community that functioned this way...
Two such fascinating and affecting films in such a short time bespeak a huge creative talent. With his films Korine gave a voice to the forgotten and abandoned realms of society. And then something got to him, and he stayed away from the medium for a number of years, apparently travelling alone around Europe. But then a new film went into production, about celebrity impersonators living in a commune in the Highlands, and skydiving nuns. The idea of a commune of unappreciated and perhaps rejected people is reminiscent of the family in Julien Donkey-Boy, or the backwater town in Gummo. That Korine can approach the same highly personal subject matter repeatedly, but each time in a completely original way, is testament to his creativity and feeling for the rejected and isolated. Having personally been a fan for quite some time, I'm still not quite sure what to make of him or his films...and maybe that's the way Korine likes it...
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