What’s so great about Har­mo­ny Korine’s Gummo?

With the sheer vol­ume of films para­chut­ed into our cin­e­mas and released through var­i­ous, new-fan­gled view­ing por­tals, it’s some kind of achieve­ment that a movie – any movie – could retain even half-a-microbe of cul­tur­al rel­e­vance near­ly 20 years down the line from its incep­tion. If you can, please keep your gag reflex­es in check for just a moment: yes, a term like ​“cul­tur­al rel­e­vance” is vague and bland, ush­ered in by self-appoint­ed com­men­ta­tors or (par­don my French) mar­ke­teers to sub­jec­tive­ly describe a prop­er­ty they believe is still talked about or beloved in some rar­i­fied or influ­en­tial circles.

But for the here and now, it’s used to char­ac­terise a piece of art which has man­aged to pre­serve a con­nec­tion to the mod­ern cul­tur­al land­scape, but with­out nec­es­sar­i­ly try­ing to. The sub­ject of this piece is Har­mo­ny Korine’s 1997 debut fea­ture, Gum­mo, which – if you love it, loathe it or are indif­fer­ent towards it – is a film which appears cheer­i­ly immune to the rav­ages of time. And that is part of its essen­tial beauty.

Gum­mo is a painstak­ing­ly (cre­ative­ly!) repel­lant hero­in chic cine-scrap book which demands its brave view­ers ques­tion if what they are watch­ing con­tains any artis­tic or intel­lec­tu­al nour­ish­ment what­so­ev­er. Or whether it’s all just a bunch of grotesque E num­bers set to black met­al dit­ties. This strat­e­gy in itself is what great art should do – dis­man­tle its true iden­ti­ty, or at least coquet­tish­ly obscure it from out­siders. Like pok­ing dog shit into the vol-au-vents just as they’re being car­ried into the soci­ety ball, the film retains the feel of a grand prank, like its rai­son d’être is not mere­ly to steam-up the mon­o­cles of the con­ser­v­a­tive crit­i­cal cognoscen­ti, but to force them to claw their own eyes out in abject oppro­bri­um. And then it laughs when they do so.

Per­haps one sign of the film’s endurance is that it has become a crit­i­cal short­hand in its own right. The term ​“Gum­mo-esque” (or vari­ants there­of) is often employed to describe movies with a fas­ci­na­tion in locat­ing aes­thet­ic beau­ty in crum­bling, small town land­scapes, or those that cap­ture balls-out parochial­ism with a spare nat­u­ral­ism. The unyield­ing and uncom­fort­able man­ner in which Gum­mo grap­ples with human diver­si­ty has also allowed it to linger long in the mem­o­ry. Where some may see it as a young, afflu­ent oik putting togeth­er a Bar­num-esque freak­show for the delec­ta­tion of bray­ing lol­ly­gag­gers in expen­sive base­ball caps, oth­ers could ally Korine’s cos­met­i­cal­ly unvar­nished mode with work by pho­tog­ra­phers like Nan Goldin or Diane Arbus. Maybe it’s mag­i­cal social realism?

And just to con­fuse mat­ters fur­ther, Korine leans on the redoubtable (and clas­si­cal­ly-inclined) tal­ent of the late cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Jean-Yves Escoffi­er who cap­tures all the rasp­ing degra­da­tion on show by mix­ing ghost­ly, glid­ing pans with fug­gy, close-quar­ters hand-held tech­niques. The direc­tor pays lip ser­vice to these pres­tige qual­i­ties while using them to cap­ture inno­cent trans­gres­sion, which in turn makes deci­pher­ing the film’s mean­ings (what­ev­er they may be) even tougher. The ques­tion of whether Korine is mock­ing his sub­jects, or whether he’s pre­sent­ing them in the same flawed way as we would do any human char­ac­ter, con­stant­ly hangs over the film. And it’s not a ques­tion with a clear cut answer.

There’s a charm­ing irony to be found glanc­ing back at the press reviews of the film that sur­faced around its orig­i­nal release. Just as the upstart writer-direc­tor – a gawky style mag poster boy fol­low­ing the suc­cès de scan­dale that was Kids – used his cam­era to chip away and inspect the human mildew form­ing on the under­side of America’s mid west pover­ty-belt, crit­ics appeared to be plun­der­ing the out­er reach­es of their own lex­i­cons in order to artic­u­late their fiery con­tempt for this ugly-beau­ti­ful provo­ca­tion. Janet Maslin of the New York Times brass­i­ly announced in the open­ing line of her hard take­down that Gum­mo was the worst film of the year.

She lat­er decried the film’s lack of poet­ic poten­cy by cit­ing a line of dia­logue from the film’s intro­duc­tion to the tor­na­do-rav­aged berg of Xenia, Ohio: ​“I saw a girl fly­in’ through the sky and I looked up her skirt.” As dis­mis­sive of politesse though it may be, there’s a cer­tain human­i­ty to the obser­va­tion, that even in trag­ic cir­cum­stances our inqusi­tive impuls­es remain. And to thumb its nose fur­ther at those look­ing to be pla­cat­ed by drab con­ven­tion, it does con­tain sta­ples of Hol­ly­wood films such as cheap eroti­cism, sex­u­al dan­ger, mur­der, youth­ful mon­keyshines, des­per­a­tion caused by pover­ty, musi­cal mon­tages, heart­felt mono­logues and even an incred­i­ble dance sequence. It just recal­i­brates them to fit with its own tum­ble­down milieu.

Though mod­ern movie lovers might hold the film in high esteem (for this writer, it’s still the best thing Korine has put his name to), it’s not just a ran­dom drop in the ocean which rev­o­lu­tionised cin­e­ma in one cat-whip­ping blast. Though not as raw and emo­tion­al­ly com­plex as films by John Cas­savetes, or as spir­i­tu­al­ly pro­found and round­ed as those by Robert Bres­son, you can trace DNA back to both of these direc­tors. Per­haps Gum­mo offers a more cos­met­i­cal­ly inclined 90s con­tin­u­a­tion of the punk­ish nihilism expressed in Bresson’s 1977 film The Dev­il, Prob­a­bly? Or maybe it harks back to Cas­savetes’ shot-on-the-shoul­der blast of twi­light frot­tage in, Shad­ows, from 1959?

Or per­haps its roots plunge deep­er still, back to the tra­di­tion of Amer­i­can docu­fic­tion lode­stones such as Lionel Rogosin’s On the Bow­ery (from 1956) or Mor­ris Engel’s Lit­tle Fugi­tive (from 1953), both films which sup­plant a broad dra­mat­ic frame­work over an attempt to approx­i­mate the shrill unruli­ness of real life? Or maybe we have to look right back to the silent era, where direc­tors still unsure of the capa­bil­i­ties of the medi­um, sim­ply point­ed their rudi­men­ta­ry cam­eras at the peo­ple of the fields, the streets, the fac­to­ries, and allowed the lens exam­ine their nat­ur­al behaviour?

Despite its abid­ing under­ground pop­u­lar­i­ty, the film has remained in dis­tri­b­u­tion lim­bo for quite some time. An Amer­i­can DVD exists, as do var­i­ous Euro­pean ver­sions. A VHS can be bought in the UK if you know the right peo­ple. In 2009, the film was tossed back into the lime­light through the sur­pris­ing out­let of prime­time tele­vi­sion tal­ent show, ​‘The X Fac­tor’, where one its con­tes­tants opt­ed to sing a ren­di­tion of Roy Orbison’s ​‘Cryin’’ and cite its prove­nance as the film Gum­mo. The ques­tion, ​‘what is Gum­mo?’, was sud­den­ly on the lips of a nation, with TV come­di­an Har­ry Hill even turn­ing the moment into a reg­u­lar call-back gag on his tea-time mag­a­zine show, TV Burp.

There’s a chance to pay fur­ther homage to Gum­mo when the Lon­don Short Film Fes­ti­val hold a week­end ​“Gum­mo­sium”, screen­ing the film along with some of Korine’s ear­ly shorts, and host­ing a pan­el dis­cus­sion about the film’s endurance and lega­cy. It’s all hap­pen­ing on the 16^th and 17^th Jan­u­ary at London’s ICA Cin­e­ma, which gives Korinophiles ample time to dust down their pink bun­ny ears, tune up their squeeze box­es, sniff some aerosol fumes, pop some Rital­in, tape some bacon to the wall, wres­tle a chair and devise an accom­pa­ny­ing tap rou­tine for Madonna’s ​‘Like a Prayer’.

The 2016 Lon­don Short Film Festival’s Har­mo­ny Korine Week­ender (with MUBI​.com) is on 16 and 17 Jan­u­ary. For venue and tick­et­ing info vis­it short​films​.org​.uk