I Think The World Is Just Too Loud: Julien Donkey-Boy (1999)

It is a fact, every time I think I have made some huge stride in understanding my place on earth and the meaning of my existence, I end up watching a Harmony Korine movie and everything I took for granted or valued becomes completely arbitrary and irrelevant in the face of artistic expression at its finest.  Some time ago a gave heavy praise to Korine's most recent experimental work Trash Humpers, although I flailed at the task of conceptualizing its brilliance and cinematic importance with words, because to be honest it is about the most indescribable thing on Earth.  Korine's earlier work Julien Donkey-Boy follows more in lines with this seminal film Gummo, while also adhering, for the most part, to the insanely strict rules of Dogme 95, a film style influenced heavily by minimalism and cinematic distancing.  By no means narratively linear, Julien Donkey-Boy focuses on the world of a schizophrenic boy and in doing so manages to provide viewers with a narrative and visual composition indicative of an individual suffering from such experiences, of course this is the manner and method familiar to the controversial young artist, yet it manages to serve for the inner convictions of the title character.  Unlike many of Korine's other works both in and out of the film medium, Julien Donkey-Boy seems quite reverent to notions of religion and exudes a particular celebration of those with severe physical and mental disabilities.  Taking digital camera work and then transferring it to 8mm only to blow it up to a larger frame size, the grainy quality of every shot in the film creates a serenity and surreal composition that allows for a viewer to freeze at any point in the film and become witness to a piece of still artwork and effort I have only seen happen one other time in Terence Malick's The Thin Red Line, which, by no coincidence, is one of Korine's favorite films.  Finally, if there is any one doubting the validity of this surprisingly humane offering, it goes without saying that the inclusion of Werner Herzog in the cast should all but secure its brilliance...seriously his scenes are magnificently absurd, and at times poetically perfected.

Julien Donkey-Boy follows the forays through a few days in the life of Julien ( Ewen Bremmer) a highly schizophrenic young man who works as a aid to blind youth in his community.  Despite clearly taking great pride in his work he is often the victim of severe verbal attacks and points of degradation by his irate German-American father, played masterfully by Werner Herzog.  Simultaneously, viewers are provided with the desultory acts and engagements of a pregnant young girl named Pearl (Chloe Sevigny) who is assumedly the sister of Julien.  Both Julien and Pearl, with no particular purpose engage with various groups in their community, whether it be an overly optimistic drummer with no arms, or a exceptionally garrulous employee at a thrift store.  Throughout their experiences is the intercutting of a hyper-expanded image of a young girl ice skater spinning to "O Mio Babbino Caro," perhaps one of the most used opera pieces in cinema, here of course with a bit of diagetic irony, as to adhere to the rules of Dogme 95.  It is revealed that at some point prior to the narrative Julien's mother has died, affirmed when his father attempts to pay him money to dance with him wearing his deceased wife's dress.  Perhaps the most centered moment of the film occurs when Julien believes he is talking with his mother on the phone, even though viewers are quite aware that it is Pearl on the other end.  The remainder of the film is a series of fleeting moments, ones involving games of bowling, stretching for wrestling and a surprisingly intense scene at a predominantly African-American church.  Yet when Pearl suffers from a slip on the ice while skating, her miscarriage completely regrounds the films closing moments into something very real, very tragic and a jarring reminder that the world of a person with mental issues is not to be taken frivolously.

This earnest study of a person with a severe mental disorder is not to be undervalued, certainly not in the hands of Harmony Korine, whose films often involve characters with real life disorders, as is the case of little persons in Gummo, or a fictional study of person's with dissociative identity disorder.  Hell anybody who has seen an interview with Korine will often find themselves wondering if he does not suffer from some issues himself, particularly his inspired monologue on playground in the documentary Beautiful Losers.  Yet, Julien Donkey-Boy is starkly different from the other films in Korine's oeuvre, in some much as it seems to earnestly attempt to recreate the life and issues of suffering from schizophrenia, whether it be dealing with an overbearing and frustrated parent, or facing ridicule from a community that does not obtain the understanding or care to learn to cope with a person with mental challenges.  Furthermore, in a manner that is as uniquely meta, as it is "Korinesque" he causes viewers to also take note of what a schizophrenic person might experience via visual and aural editing that is often repetitive and always jarring, especially during the scene following the church visit, as well as the drawn out scene involving a smoking performance artist, which has moved quite high into my list of the most disturbing things I have ever seen in film.  Ultimately, Korine takes measures to make a surreal work that is visually alluring, however, it is always his intent to provoke and often disturb and Julien Donkey-Boy is absolutely no exception, although, it is hard to condemn Julien for his actions in the closing scenes, unlike those on the bus with him, we know well of his past experiences which explain his seemingly grotesque actions and to be fair, would another individual not act similarly given the same set of obstacles?

Key Scene:  The church scene would be common place in many other films, but in the hands of Korine, especially given his reputation, it is transcendent cinema at its fullest.

You should own a copy of this movie, it is cooler and far more important than ninety percent of the films you already own.  I promise you of that fact.

You Don't Go To Work Everyday. You Got To A Bar Everyday: Trees Lounge (1996)

It is fitting that right off of my month of horror films, I got into something like Trees Lounge.  The film is about gross people, living in a gross existence dealing with the gross experiences surrounding their lives.  However, as Steve Buscemi's directorial debut, this focus on less than amicable persons manages to capture a few moments of beauty within these somewhat uninspired lives, as well as catch more than enough of the tragedy one can expect latent within the films subject.  Furthermore, the film captures a few moments of comedy, as one could come to expect when considering Buscemi is in control.  A criticism could be directed at this film for being somewhat slow in its pace and a bit all around in what exactly it is trying to say, but I cannot help but find a simple adoration in what is both being said and not said within the film.  The actors, a mixture of notable stars, indie icons and flat out amateur individuals allows for something that both seemingly reflects a film about drifting personas as well as a conscious commentary on the cyclical nature of joy and pain as it reflects a larger concept of humanity. It is quite likely that Trees Lounge could have been so much more, but I would argue for a directorial debut that it too could have been so much less.  It is hard not to find something to love about this film, even if the characters are inconceivably unlikeable.  The soundtrack is magnificent and contains a level of hipness that could easily cause one to think that it is a Jim Jarmusch film, a notion that would be seconded by the somewhat cursory nature of the relationships between the individuals in the film narrative.  Trees Lounge does not exist as a film concerned with overdramatizing life and all its woes, instead; it simply portrays one man's desultory movement around a small town, in which he finds many half-hearted friends, a night of fleeting love and quite a few enemies, ultimately, realizing that a life he thinks to be uniquely his own has already existed, and its outcome is less than welcoming.

Steve Buscemi plays a double role in that he is the director, as well as the the main character of the film, Tommy, a down and out alcoholic, whose severe gambling habits have cause him to become unemployed, losing his job as a mechanic after stealing from his boss Rob (Anthony LaPaglia), who just happens to be living with Tommy's ex-girlfriend, and possible mother of his child Theresa (Elizabeth Bracco).  Nothing seems to fair well for Tommy, he continually seeks jobs as a mechanic, only to be turned down, leading him to continually drink his evenings away, until the passing of his Uncle Al (Seymour Cassel) causes him to revisit many of his detached family members during a funeral.  Many of these family members are less than receptive to their alcoholic kin only offering passive acknowledgement of his presence, save for a close family friend's daughter Debbie (Chloe Sevigny).  After taking up Al's former job as an ice cream truck driver, Tommy finally appears to have things going for him, even making a close relationship with one of his fellow bar fly friends Mike (Mark Boone Junior), as well as spending much more time with Debbie.  It is, in fact, during one night at the bar that Debbie's appearance spurs Tommy to spend more time with the young girl, eventually leading to a night of them making out.  Debbie's father and close friend of Tommy's Jerry (Daniel Baldwin) discovers what Tommy has done and enters into a fit of rage, resulting in chasing him down about a baseball field grabbing a bat to take to not only Tommy but his ice cream truck as well.  The film then displays Tommy discussing an alternate future with Theresa in which they both would be happy sharing a child together, before he eventually heads back to the bar to take his place in the seat of a former regular whose leave of absence was due to health issues, suggesting his own future in the process.

The basic premise of Trees Lounge does not sound as though it will make for a particularly watchable film, viewers are essentially provided with a variety of druggie alcoholic individuals who fail to take any credit for their lives, particularly in that they seem more content with numbing their minds from their despair than actually rising above their situation.  One could certainly make this case for Mike who desperately wants to rekindle a relationship between his wife and daughter, but cannot bring himself to leave the bar for a day or to provide an honest account of anything to his wife.  Instead of accepting his problems, Mike continually blames his wife for refusing to accommodate his selfish demands.  Similarly, Tommy continually complains about the issues of not having a job and how it is affecting his ability to traverse through a confrontational world, yet seems quite content to blow what little money he has on booze, or ignore job offers that he deems above his character.  These descriptions certainly reflect a film in which the characters are not redeemable, but a larger issue of lack of communication and community influences the narrative.  Tommy, Mike and a few other regulars know each other closely, however, when it comes to helping one another do anything but drunkenly walk home they could care less for their safety.  For example, Mike has an opportunity to employ Tommy within his moving company but ignore his requests, perhaps because he figuratively cannot hear Tommy's cries for help, or literally does not want his stoic, cool bar persona to become connected to his rather loathsome public persona.  Even when Jerry assumes that Tommy might be taking a liking to Debbie, he could have been more adamant about it not occurring, but a lethal amount of indifference causes him to shrug his shoulders and inevitably let it occur.  Characters in Trees Lounge are afraid to communicate and this lack of interaction causes for a fractured and, continually, doomed community, one which Tommy is likely never to escape, and perhaps we should on a very small level feel bad for him.

Key Scene:  The entire baseball confrontation is perhaps one of the funniest things to ever happen in an indie film.

This film is well worth watching, buying a copy is perhaps not that necessary, but, thankfully, it is on Netflix watch instantly making a viewing quite easy.