Gummo (Widescreen)

 

 

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Well, what can I say, director Korine seem to want to challenge the audience to find the justification for his debut film. Following by his screenplay, Kids, which he wrote at 19, further carves out his relevance in today's cinema as one weird director. This movie without a story or seemingly without a script can form many reactions. Korine follows various characters in a backwoods town at Xenia, Ohio which was once nearly devastated by a tornado. The lives followed here include mostly adolescents and centers on two boys, Tummler (Nick Sutton) and Solomon (Jacob Reynolds). Solomon's father was killed during the Xenia tornadoes...and the film follows these boys on various destructive and self-destructive exploits that defy any cinematic validity. This is not film in most ways, it is real life. This "real life" includes glue sniffing, riding dirt bikes, sex and watching such challenging scenes as a man pimping his mentally ill wife who spends her days bedridden and dolled up like a 2-dollar hooker. At the same time we also meet two sisters, Dot (Chloë Sevigny) and Helen (Carisa Glucksman), who want to become stripper's .Then there is also a boy (Jacob Sewell) who wanders around town wearing pink bunny ears.

Korine constructed his movie as a series of vignettes depicting these characters and various others engaged in disruptive behavior. The episodes range from funny and beautiful to gratuitous and senseless. I found the cinematography of "Gummo" stark, depressing but oddly hypnotic. It's really the way that the director filmed it (scratchy montage, digital low-quality shootings), and the conversations between the two boys that make the movie compelling and fascinating to watch. . I found the performances, including that of Chloe Sevigny to be honest, authentic and sad.

The movie is filmed like the lives of all the people in the village. There's no real development, people don't really do much to improve their situation, and it's a secluded world they live in. The weird southern-style music and the many unexplained characters like the pink-bunny boy make it a surreal experience. The most memorable scene: was Solomon bath scene.....tell me just how disgusting can a bath be and on top of that while eating dinner?!?

It would be nice to think that, if they do exist, at least we shouldn't have to look at them... This movie is, indeed, a more gritty and honest version of "Slacker". They make a good double feature. Of course, after seeing "Gummo", you will see the cast of "Slackers" Many viewers have despised this film and it's good that people are offended. Maybe it just means that the movie accomplished its goal.

This movie was a horrible waste of film and time. Not only was the plot very hard to follow, the acting was beyond unwatchable. This movie was possibly one of the worst i've ever seen. It was so bad i could'nt finish it, I nearly passed out.

Most tattoo artists I know say they are inundated with customers requesting to have American flags etched permanently into their bodies. I only wonder if any of these patriots have seen the movie, Gummo, a disturbing portrayal by filmmaker Harmony Korine of life in one small American town that they might not be so proud of. The film begins with a shot of Xenia Ohio, and a voiceover of a child's deadpan description. "A few years ago a tornado hit this place. It killed people left and right ... Houses were split open and you could see necklaces hanging from branches of trees ... I saw a girl fly through the sky and I looked up her skirt." These few sentences suggest the tragedy, mystery, and humor that surge through this film. However, most fans of your typical Hollywood flicks with explosive action and character developments may not be able to appreciate these features of Gummo. The movie has no plot, just a series of situations, no big screen stars, just small-time and even amateur actors. The characters they play simply exist on the screen without growing or changing. Most of them are lower-class white children of the type we rarely see outside the realm of trashy daytime talk shows. In fact, Korine actually tracked down Nick Sutton to play Tummler after he saw him on an episode of "The Sally Jesse Raphael Show" called "My Child Died from Sniffing Paint." When Sutton, who's a paint-sniffing survivor, was asked where he thought he'd be in a few years he replied simply, "I'll probably be dead." It was at that moment Korine claims to have fallen in love with the boy's image.
In the movie, Tummler is one of two boys who cruise through Xenia on BMX, looking for stray cats to kill and then sell to the local butcher. The other boy, whose odd-looking face and underdeveloped body made him the promotional poster boy for Gummo, is Solomon. Other characters include the local pimp whose only prostitute is an attention-starved mentally-challenged woman, a couple of local teenage girls with bleached out blond hair who spend their time doting on their youngest sister while trying to make their nipples larger, and Bunny Boy, who doesn't speak at all during the movie but haunts many scenes as he passes by donning little else but a hood of long bunny ears.
One gets the feeling that none of these people has ever left Xenia, a place of grimy poverty, casual cruelty, and the type of boredom that gives way to drunken parties where men arm wrestle and in a make-shift ring pit themselves one by one against a kitchen chair. Although this film will likely disturb and disgust most viewers, it is a chance to see one man's unique cinema graphic vision-a dreamy yet poignant art project that is not meant to be defined but reacted to. Gummo is an electrifying succession of startling, strange, and tender images. Whether or not moviegoers can claim they were enthralled or they walked out halfway through-two perfectly legitimate responses-it is nevertheless a type of poetry on the screen.
Towards the end of Gummo there is a scene where Solomon's mother is simultaneously giving him a bath and feeding him a spaghetti dinner. For dessert, after his hair is washed, he receives a candy bar that he accidentally drops into the brown bath water and then, completely unphased, eats. There is barely any dialogue in this sequence, no background music, and if you look close enough you can see a piece of fried bacon stuck to the wall behind him with Scotch tape. This is Harmony Korine's idea of entertainment, bizarre images that stick with you long after the movie has ended.
At one point, Solomon's mother joins him in the basement while he is lifting weights-really handfuls of silverware bundled together-in front of a huge mirror. We watch his puny reflection, his deadpan determination. There is a hint of tenderness in his mother's eyes as she looks at him, a hint of pain as she puts on her dead husband's tap dancing shoes and begins to flop ridiculously around in them. Also when she picks up a handgun, jokingly holds it to her child's head and tells him to smile, there is a hint of something else, though it is difficult to determine exactly what it is. For sure, however, it is something entirely unique to Korine, a different brand of humor or tragedy or irony or beauty or perhaps none and all of the above. Scenes like this seem just to happen naturally in Gummo, and Korine, with the eye of an artist and the help of cinematographer, Jean-Yves Escoffier, shows them to us without judging or condescending to any of the characters involved.
The idea that places like Xenia actually exist in our country won't sit well with many people, yet Korine seems to want to play this lifelike texture up with grainy cuts from "home videos" of tornadoes and real people doing absurd standup routines for the camera. And while Gummo is confined to life in this one small impoverished American town, the soundtrack canvasses almost all aspects of American culture, ranging from Hoosier Hotshots to Madonna to Almedo Riddle singing the children's song, "My Little Rooster," to the death metal sounds of "Sleep," to Roy Orbison.
Ultimately, whether its lurid images of life are upsetting to viewers or not, Xenia is undoubtedly one pocket of American culture that should not be ignored. Neither should Harmony Korine's vision; and one must not forget that Gummo is, in essence, a visual experience. Without a storyline or any character development there's little else to go on anyway. However, the subtlety of each camera shot, the way each scene can be shockingly real, over-the-top, dream-like, touching, cruel, funny, and beautiful all at the same time makes for one bizarre film that's not to be missed.

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1.0 out of 5 stars Raw? Or Ridiculous!
I know its a little late to watch this movie, but the hype over this movie was absolute absurd. On with the review. Read more

Published on Mar 29 2009 by G. Motychko

5.0 out of 5 stars Odd little masterpiece
I first saw this film in the late '90s. I had mixed feelings about it then, but some of the images have stuck with me to the point that I recently bought a DVD copy. Read more

Published on Feb 8 2007 by Thomas Hlavacek

1.0 out of 5 stars CRAPPO
A better title for this extremly annoying film would be CRAPPO.

Published on July 10 2004 by T. Ventura

4.0 out of 5 stars Shampoo, Spaghetti, and a Crunch Bar
This movie is not supposed to be some kind of "liberal arts" movie so quit attacking conservatives on this site

Published on Jun 20 2004 by Pithy Commentz

4.0 out of 5 stars Sic film but good
I've not buy this film, but I've seen this on tv, And this movie is pure dark sense of humor. Anyone may find this movie drama and some may find this movie fun and comedian... Read more

Published on Jun 13 2004 by Simon

3.0 out of 5 stars Bizarre and Disturbing Lives Without Parental Guidance
Gummo takes place in a small Ohio town where the audience follows some kids that lead bizarre and disturbing lives without parental supervision or guidance. Read more

Published on Jun 12 2004 by Kim Anehall

4.0 out of 5 stars Strange, But Interesting Movie
If you have seen the movie - KIDS than you are familiar with Harmony Korine's work. (This was also the movie playing in DMX's house at the very beginning of the movie BELLY. Read more

Published on Jun 12 2004 by J. McQueen

1.0 out of 5 stars Absolute unredeemed filth!
This is simply put one of the worst movies I have ever seen. In fact, just putting any words on paper about this film gives it more attention than it deserves. Read more

Published on Jun 2 2004 by A. W. Michael

2.0 out of 5 stars Gummo
I haven't seen this movie and I don't intend to, but I want to warn you never to go near Xenia, Springfield, or Cedarville, Ohio. They have evil energy.

Published on May 28 2004

4.0 out of 5 stars excellent, but too weird for some
I loved the film, and I gather that some of the other reviewers like to call what they don't understand "pretentious. Read more

Published on April 25 2004 by Nancy Walker

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