Gummo

Plot synopsis:
A grainy voiced narrator (Solomon) recounts the events of the tornado while disturbing home-movie images play — mostly of the town's people. A mute adolescent boy, known as Bunny Boy, wears only pink bunny ears, shorts, and tennis shoes on an overpass in the rain.
A cat is carried by the scruff of its neck by Tummler, a teenage boy. He drowns the cat in a barrel of water. The film then cuts to a different scene with Tummler, in a wrecked car with a girl. They fondle each other, and Tummler realizes there is a lump in one of the girl's breasts.
Tummler and Solomon then ride down a hill on bikes. The narrator introduces Tummler as a boy with "a marvelous persona", whom some people call "downright evil". Later, Tummler aims an air rifle at a cat. His friend Solomon stops him from killing the cat, protesting that it is a house cat. They leave and the camera follows the cat to its owners' house. The cat is owned by three sisters, two of whom are teenagers and one who is pre-pubescent.
The film cuts back to Tummler and Solomon, who are hunting feral cats. They bring the cats to a local grocer, who intends to butcher and sell them to a local restaurant, and the grocer tells them that they have a rival in the cat killing business. They then buy glue from the grocer, which they use to get high via huffing.
The film then cuts to a scene in which two foul-mouthed young boys dressed as cowboys destroy things in a junkyard. Bunny Boy arrives and the other boys shoot him "dead" with cap guns. Bunny Boy plays dead and the boys curse at him, rifle through his pockets, then remove and throw one of his shoes. They grow bored of this and leave him sprawled on the ground.
Tummler and Solomon track down a local boy who is poaching "their" cats. The poacher, named Jarrod Wiggley, is poisoning the cats rather than shooting them. When Tummler and Solomon break into Jarrod's house with masks and weapons with intent to hurt him, they find photos of the young teen in drag and his elderly grandmother, who is catatonic and attached to life support machinery. The poacher Jarrod is forced to care for her, which he had earlier opined was "disgusting". Seeing that Jarrod isn't home, Tummler and Solomon decide to leave. Tummler then discovers the grandmother lying in her bed, states that it is "no way to live," and turns off the life support machine.
A number of other scenes are interspersed throughout the film, including: an intoxicated man (played by Harmony Korine) flirting with a gay dwarf; a man pimping his Down syndrome afflicted sister to Solomon and Tummler; the sisters encountering an elderly child molester; a pair of twin boys selling candy door-to-door; a brief conversation with a tennis player who is treating his ADD; a long scene of Solomon eating breakfast while taking a bath in dirty water; a drunken party with arm- and chair-wrestling; and two skinhead brothers boxing each other in their kitchen. There are also a number of even smaller scenes depicting Satanic rituals, footage seemingly from home movies, and conversations containing racial bigotry.
The next scene in the movie is set to the song "Crying" by Roy Orbison, which had been previously mentioned by Tummler as the song his older brother,who was a transsexual, would sing (the brother eventually went to the "Big City" and abandoned him). The final scene involves Solomon and Tummler shooting the sisters' cat repeatedly with their air rifles in the rain with jump cuts to Bunny Boy kissing the teenage girls in a swimming pool. Bunny Boy runs towards the camera through a field holding the body of the dead cat, which he shows to the audience, breaking fourth wall.
The final scene shows a girl, who shaved her eyebrows earlier in the movie, singing "Jesus Loves Me" in front of her parents in bed. The film finally cuts to black as they tell her to go to bed.

Tags: comedy, mystery, avant garde, cult, violence, psychedelic

Review:
It only took me a few minutes to realize why so many critics hated it, which was the very reason I liked this film.Gummo is a classic case of style over substance.
On first viewing, Gummo appears to be a collection of random events, but after watching it a few more times, it it becomes more obvious how each scene and character link together (although there are still a few that I am unsure of!!).
Perspectives and values change as we grow older, whether or not a young man will mature to the point of recognizing the follies and dreams of his youth or he'll embrace the anger and grow up to be GG Allin, and whether or not settling down to a regular life is a personal betrayal of a former self, I think something like Gummo needs to be made and more of it.This is punk filmmaking at its scummiest, the vibe of antisocial angst despair and anger is pure necro punk rock like GG Allin throwing feces at his audience and smashing beer cans open on his head, it's about being violent and eccentric right now as a means of killing time and making something out of tearing down something else.
But it's good to have these things captured on film then thrown away for anyone who might wanna find them.I read a bit about Trash Humpers and it seems Harmony Korine doesn't feel there's anything to grow out of.
Set in Xenia, Ohio, Gummo feels like a deliberate riposte to Hollywood by its creator, Harmony Korine, whose penchant for subversion was already evident in his screen writing debut for Larry Clark's Kids (1995).
While there may not be a plot, it doesn't need one because the different stories it tells weave together perfectly and you get a great picture of the town and its residents.The film is shot brilliantly as well, Korine using so many different techniques so effectively.
Although the simple plot line of "White trash living in Ohio" might not seem that enthralling, the way the movie is shot, mixing documentary style (albeit acted) clips with an actual plotline, is excellent.
These aren't the (supposedly) proud and noble people who came to America on board the Mayflower, but rather those that travelled in the ships hull; those who eventually ended up in some dreary trailer camp and hamlet somewhere in the Midwest, simply because they weren't wanted anywhere else."The prophet has no honor in his own country", goes an old saying, which would explain the harsh criticism that director Harmony Korine has received, especially by American critics and reviewers.
Korine descends from a similar environment and I dare say that it took courage to explore such an uncomfortable background.The closest I can compare "Gummo" to is Werner Herzog's "Stroszek"; not only are the filming techniques very similar (whether Korine is a Herzog-fan I do not know, but it wouldn't surprise me in the least), blending together professionals, amateur- and non-actors seamlessly, but both films have a similar nihilist air, telling stories that are free of redemption, yet captivate the viewer's attention like a travelling freak-show or the birth of a two-headed cow.One of the main reasons that I was watching "Gummo" in the first place, before even realizing what kind of film it was, was the presence of actor Jacob Reynolds.
Not that i'm a photography or directing genius, but the director worked with many different kinds of film to bring out the grime and trash of the movie.
Then I'd be perfectly happy if another tornado came by and leveled the whole place.Watching this movie was like looking at those years through some really distorted mirror and finding recognizeable nuances of personality in it.
There are always going to be wannabe artsy types out there who claim to see things other people don't; they "get" movies like Gummo, or at least they pretend to, so they can act as if they're in on something the rest of the world just isn't smart enough to understand.
It goes like this:  first, we get to watch a shirtless boy in a bunny hood spit and urinate off an overpass; next, we meet two teenagers who ride their bikes around the desolate and dilapidated town, looking for cats they can kill and sell to a local restaurant owner; then, we're introduced to three bleach-blonde sisters who don't seem to have any parents and who busy themselves with such activities as ripping electrical tape off their bare nipples.
We actually feel the dread, frustration, meaninglessness that people caught in these circumstances experience.This is why I read, go to movies, listen to music and experience all art - to experience life from the many different perspectives available.
If you only want to be entertained - there really are only a few stories to tell and there are many "artists" out there willing to serve you the same McArt to "satisfy" your needs, but for those of us who would like to know more about something other than ourselves and our ethnocentric, narcissistic experiences, movies like Gummo will always be admired.
I think the problem is that most of us expect something different from film, art, novels because we've been fed so much crap that (similar to my kids when they come back from a week at a friend or family member's house where fast food is the daily fare) we cannot taste the goodness of real meals.
Any 30+ year old film buff with a decent taste could probably watch "Kids" and at least get a bit of perspective, while maybe questioning the youth of the nation.Gummo doesn't have any questions to ask though.
It might seem pointless at first, but you may need to look a bit closer to truly analyze the themes of Gummo.The opening scenes describe how a tornado has destroyed the town of Xenia, Ohio, and we then begin viewing the residents of the town trying to find meaning in their pointless, hopeless, and overall miserable lives.Korine stated once that about 75% of Gummo was scripted.
The documentary feel adds to the film spectacularly because it forces the viewer to confront reality: that, somewhere in the world, there are people who behave as the characters in Gummo do.Even the name of Gummo is symbolic in a few ways.
Korine, here, is stating that Gummo is something new; something cinema has literally never seen before, even if it has seen its "relatives" ("Kids" possibly?)There are a number of assumptions that reviewers make when discussing the film; I'm not suggesting any of these are right or wrong, but they do exist.
It's not even sadness about poverty, or loneliness, but rather a state of hatred for anything and everything, the feeling of wanting to be dead, or at the very least have something to give life meaning.Gummo hits the audience over the head repeatedly with its horrors of this small town wasteland.
The comparison could be made that watching Gummo is like reading about the Holocaust; neither are fun to watch, and the imagery is nauseating at times, yet many people are fascinated by it, not in a sadistic sense of the word, but merely fascinated by the fact that it happened.
When I first started watching this film I was somewhat shocked having grown up very far away from anything like the town that the movie was set in.
The reality of the film is rather depressing but this is what a lot of America is like- the grimy scene when the two boys get milkshakes was a great slice of the crappy culture that is much of the United States and of the world.
Young Harmony Korine,who wrote "Kids"(1995),made his directional debut with this truly bizarre low budget piece of art about young people in small town of Xenia,Ohio.The main characters-two boys(Solomon and Tummler)kill cats for fun and break into a house to euthanize an old woman.Other oddities on display are a man who pimps his retarded sister,a strange shirtless boy in pink bunny ears etc,etc.I love "Gummo",because I'm in the position of enjoying everything what is different and controversial.Almost everything today is corporate Hollywood trash with an overblown budget and overpaid actors/actresses.It's truly a refreshing change to see something original like "Gummo".Of course it is intentionally outlandish,often repulsive and occasionally hilarious,but it's a treat,if you're fed up with MTV-oriented banal Hollywood crap.Personally I love the soundtrack of "Gummo"-great death/black metal stuff(Burzum,Bethlehem etc.)Especially Bethlehem is an unique band.They play totally depressing death/black/suicide metal with some of the sickest vocals ever recorded.It's truly an amazing music-check out especially their albums like "Dictius Te Necare"(1996)and "S.U.I.Z.I.D"(1998)!So if you don't mind to see something different,watch "Gummo"-you'll love it!.
I don't want to denigrate anyone, but those people really did give 'Southern whites' a bad image, in my opinion, kind of like the way ghetto trash makes people feel about other poor black people.
Nick Sutton (Tummler) was discovered by Harmony on a talk show that pertained to 'paint-sniffing survivors'- he commented that anyone who can survive copious amounts of inhalants must have a good constitution and that those were the kinds of people he wanted to work with...Much has been made of the shocking nature of this film.
I think I like the pointlessness of the film, the lack of story, plot, even character development.
All of this contributes to the picture Gummo paints.On the other hand, I think some more attention should have been devoted towards character development and plot, simply so we could understand the scene better.
Although set in Xenia, Ohio, Gummo was filmed in Nashville Tennessee because, I suspect, they would have been run out of town in Xenia, which is certainly not glorified in any way and is not even accurately portrayed, especially the accent.
If you think you'd share their opinion on a movie with no plot, disturbing central characters and almost no point, then don't see it.Gummo is a film that captures a certain time in a certain place with certain people.
It simply shows you these images, these people and says: "Look, this is what's happening behind our backs in America."Despite the fact that the characters are hollow, amoral and almost emotionless in this movie, there's an inescapable sense of innocence in all of them.
The characters (and real people!) in this film make an impression, even when they are only shown for a short time and have a few lines (or no lines, like Bunny Boy).
However, what makes Gummo so much more than a "shock" movie (as so many people seem to think it is) is its non-judegemental tone on the various "freakish" characters on display.Like a good anthropologist, Harmony Korine presents the various characters in Gummo without criticizing or placing value judgements on them.
by letting his actors improvise their scenes, he allows the actors to express themselves without worrying about whether or not the director approves of their "acting."  So, in a sense, Harmony Korine is trying to bring a new "realism" to cinema, without the restraints of either cinematic techniques (i.e. lighting, camera angles, setting up the scene) or the dictatorial control of the director.So, that, in essence is why Gummo is such a breakthrough movie.
The film appears to be trying to show a snapshot of American life in a rundown town, but I don't believe it - has anybody been to a town like this, don't think so?There was no acting to speak of as pretty much everybody just emotionlessly reads lines or possibly just made stuff up - who knows - nobody says anything important or relevant so you cannot tell.The film could have started at any point and ended at any point and not detracted from it's contents (if it had finished 2 minutes after it started I would have been happier).
On the surface, this film is pure trash, but the more you delve into the disgusting and filthy masterpiece that is, Gummo, the more tragically beautiful the movie becomes.
And let me warn you, watching gummo is kind of like consuming a Harmony Korine "drug".
It's set out like a documentary so it doesn't need to have a plot, it's simply clips of weird things people do in this town of 'white trash'.
This aspect of the film makes Gummo one that can be viewed multiple times very easily,as there is not a major plot that gets resolved in the end.
These people could be anyone you or i knew, especially if you lived in a somewhat poor town in the midwest, like i did.You're not going to like this movie if you look at it to be anything other than what it is- a BRILLIANT and accurate social commentary on the sad, but at times bittersweet condition of "white trash" America..
Gummo is overated.I heard about this movie from many people.They all said how its so great and how I have to see it.Well,I enjoyed KIDS,it's a bit shocking,maybe a little perverse,but it was entertaining.Gummo is not shocking,but very perverse and quite pointless.Hicks ride around on bikes,get dirty,kill cats and have sex with retards.I cant tell you how long Ive waited for someone to make a movie about that!Thought provoking?Definately.I will definately think twice about renting another one of Harmony's movies.Dont see this movie if you respect yourself.Dont believe the hype.Its not a brilliant,modern,shocking,innovative or unique film.It sucks.Plain and simple.Rent Gone with The wind or  Casablanca,maybe even the Pokemon Movies,but dont see this..
Trash like this inevitably triggers reviews rife with words like "genius," "misunderstood," "surreal," and "cult." The lower-middle-class white Midwest has become the happening place for hipster artists to go slumming for material, but all Korine seems to have done is slap together a shock-value home movie featuring some cheesy film-school-assignment cinematography and editing.
(Kids was written by Harmony Korine and Chloë Sevigny plays the lead female role)The only good thing about this movie was the pink bunny ears which I'm sure had no metaphorical value of any sort or any reason other than to make viewers think there was one....but hey, pink bunny ears are pink bunny ears regardless..
Perhaps Harmony Korine saw this sequence too many times, and subconsciously made it his goal to bring all viewers fears of what exactly was in that boy's head to fruition through the creation of Gummo's character, Solomon (curiously similar in appearance).
Amid a slur of controversy, aptly launched by a string of indie directors enthralled by Harmony Korine's previous movie, Kids, the newly declared genius director was encouraged to deliver yet another account of life in white trash America, set in a fictional town hit by a tornado.
I have not yet seen Korine's other films, but at this time I think Korine had all the basic elements of making a movie, he just isn't sure how to develop a rational plot, sequence, or character background for anyone.
I suppose its over length contributes to my being unmoved by a majority of the complete randomness of the supposedly "shocking" sequences throughout; each action committed by a person in the movie just goes nowhereI believe Harmony Korine was trying to show that in real life, people like this are as aimless with their futures as they are depicted here, and just do whatever they are used to, no matter what it takes.
Its characters consist of dysfunctional and generally uneducated townsfolk and we see them trawl through their everyday lives.The movie is well directed and some of the scenes work very well with the cleverly chosen music, the ending being a good example.Overall however, I just can't escape the feeling that Gummo is too arty for its own good.
There are three sisters who have a cat, a sub-humanoid child who lifts weights made out of silverware and his teenage friend who he goes off with to sniff glue and competes with a boy who kills cats and seems to want to be a model, a group of people who wrestle and demolish a chair, a Jewish midget who is gay and black that gets told stories from another kid(played by director Harmony Korine) about how he was sodomized as a child, an albino woman looking for a man, and, in particular, a boy with rabbit ears who skateboards around town and is harassed by a couple of other boys.
I hate how it has nothing to say about this rural, poverty-stricken town except "haha, look at this shithole." I've heard Harmony Korine talk about his ideas of universal transcendent beauty, and how nothing portrayed in this film is "ugly" to him, so it can't be exploitation.
And instead of resulting in a project that doesn't know what it wants to be, it helps the film achieve the exact, dream-like aesthetic that it sets out for.Korine shows the same knack for pacing and dialogue that he did in "Kids", even if he uses it to create a much more nonlinear narrative this time around.
The movie Gummo can be described as raw, real, honest, exploitive, distasteful, explicit, artistic, and even "life-changing" as one film critic had said.
A great cutting-edge indie exploitation film with a touch of avant-garde film-making is Gummo, and I don't think that you can find a single movie out there quite like it.
Well, there is "Julien-Donkey Boy" (also directed by Harmony Korine and stars Chloe Sevigny), but even that good film doesn't match up to Gummo.
People have complained of a lack of plot in "Gummo" but who could deny that the film does indeed tell a story set firmly in its own doomed present.
This is just like watching and documentary about real people, except it isn't, and for that I think it deserves praise.Some have criticized it's lack of plot, I felt completely mesmerized by each scene.
Gummo is probably the best artistic film ever made, even though most of my favorite movies are from Hollywood or are foreign.