JULIEN DONKEY-BOY
Reviewed by Harvey Karten Independent Pictures/Fine Line Features Director: Harmony Korine Writer: Harmony Korine Cast: Ewen Bremner, Chloe Sevigny, Werner Herzog, Evan Neumann, Joyce Korine, Chryssy Kobylak, Alvin Law, Gary Berman, Brian Fisk
A high-profile critic who saw a movie I loved, "In the Company of Men," told me that never before was he so tempted to throw something at the screen. When I found out his motive was a hatred of the heartless men who are characterized by filmmaker Neil LaBute, I congratulated him for having emotions. Movies should indeed make us feel: whether good, sad, depressed, thrilled, and yes, even absolutely enraged at evil. The worst kind of movie is the bland equivalent of elevator music: it's just there.
Now, Harmony Korine's "Julien Donkey-Boy" surely does not merit the pejorative of cinematic elevator music. It made me want to throw something at the screen--a shoe, a backpack, anything available--but though the audience might cheer such an action, my throwing arm is not as good as Kevin Costner's and I'd only lose half a pair of Pro-Walkers. The problem is that my motive in wanting to heave an object is in no way the same as my colleague's. Nobody in Korine's movie is villainous. There's nobody to attack. But the picture is so personal to the filmmaker, so lacking universality and general interest to a diverse audience, that it might as well be a home movie shown to bored uncles and aunts. This time, though, we're not even family, so multiply the exasperation exponentially.
Harmony Korine, who is now 25 and turned out his first directorial effort with the plotless, repulsive "Gummo" (featuring an Ohio lad who kills cats and sells the bodies to a supermarket), is by his own statement not out to shock people with "Julien," and he probably won't. But he will encourage a good deal of his audience--those who are not so determined to demonstrate that they can perceive "art" when most others cannot--to think, "Who cares?" Watching some of these characters on the screen is about as entertaining as giving an ear to that drug-stupored denizen of the New York subways, sprawled across four seats and mumbling inconsequential nothings to no-one in particular.
The title character, a man-child played by Ewen Bremner, is a 21-year-old schizophrenic who hears voices. Korine does not share those voices with his audience, but he lets us in on quite a few babblings from Julien. The wild-haired, gold-toothed young man plays with a turtle (I think he squashes it allowing its guts to spill over his face, but I couldn't be sure). His demented father (Werner Herzog) plays a man who is likely a cause of the lad's emotional problems. Dad hoses down Julien's brother Chris (Evan Neumann), and commands the boy not to shiver. "Be a man!" He offers Julien $10 to try on a dress that the boy's mother wore to her wedding--"That's a month's pay for someone in Bangladesh." When Julien's pregnant sister Pearl (Chloe Sevigny) has a miscarriage after falling on the ice rink, Julien takes the baby's corpse, steals it away from the hospital, and rides it home on the train, hugging it to his person while crawling under his bed. Poignant this is not.
When Korine thinks we've had enough of this Julien, he takes us to other Fellini-esque characters, including an armless man who plays cards and drums with his feet, an black man who sings a rap song over and over about how he's an Albino from Alabama; and a saleswoman in a baby clothing department who tells Pearl that when the first-born is a boy, the womb is blessed.
Korine's picture is photographed with 30 cameras, using the Dogma 95 technique glorified by the Danish filmmaker Lars von Triers. Dogma 95, which could be subtitled Chastity, us a kind of Brechtian notion that illusion should be stripped away, avoiding special effects or anything else that would get in the way of a documentary-style of capturing images. Clearly Korine's goal in using video, blowing it up for the big screen, is to capture a greater intimacy than can be snared by directors with opulent illusionary means at their disposal. With characters like the wearisome group promenading across this plotless, clueless film, intimacy is the last thing we may want.
Rated R. Running Time: 94 minutes. (C) 1999 Harvey Karten
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