May 14, 2010 2:06 PM
A movie review: gummo
Well it's fine time for another movie review, today i review a movie that i just finished watching a while ago, Harmony Korine's "Gummo".
Gummo takes place in Xenia, Ohio, a small town that was once struck by a tornado in 1974. That was just a little background work there because the plot mainly consists of (somewhat) unrelated vignettes featuring the town folk, whom all range from: colorful, oddball, questionable disturbed, and insane.
I heard a lot of things about the movie before i saw it, saying that it was disturbing and shocking. And not just that, but the movie was bashed for it's lack of a plot. (i think there might of been more for this, but this is all i can think of.) Personally, i think anyone who said that might of missed the point of gummo. In my opinion, i felt Korine did a great job with the whole film, even for a directorial debut no less. I felt like he painted a shocking and blatantly honest look at american society. The people in this movie aren't cheerful, happy go lucky or anything of the sorts; the lives these people lead are hopeless, nihilistic, and rather dark and slightly repulsive. Gummo also touches upon some rough issues and themes like: racism, homophobia, sexual abuse, poverty, vandalism, grief, violence, animal cruelty, and what have you; nothing in this film is sugar coated just to let you know (hell there's even a part where a guy prostitutes his own sister, who happens to have downs syndrome!).
One thing i need to mention is the shooting. Most of the film was shot on a 35mm, but there were other parts were filmed on different (and also very old) set of cameras: polaroid, VHS, Hi-8, 16mm, and 8mm cameras were used to achieve a cheap, home movie-esque style of filming quality which i thought worked very very well for the movie.
The music is interesting ensemble of tunes that range from classics like madonna's "like a prayer", buddy holly's "everyday", and roy orbison's "crying" to the traditional children's song "my little rooster" and even to popular metal bands like sleep, burzum, eyehategod, bathory, and brujeria were used for the soundtrack. The music, overall, really fits in well for the tone of the movie.
As for the acting, i have never heard of any of these actors before, but regardless, they all did a great job of playing their roles. I also wanna give a shoutout to jacob reynolds as one of the film's main characters, solomon. He did a fine job of playing his character whose troubled and alienated.
Overall, Gummo is a movie that blew me away with it's style and creativity. While not really disturbing, it is a very weird film i'll admit, but it does one thing that most movies of it's kind do right: show us that the world isn't all sunshine and rainbows and can be, more often than not, a dark and gritty place. and we just have to live with it.
As much as i highly recommend this, i can only do so for anyone over the age of 17, and is more open minded on such matter present in the movie.
I give Gummo, a well deserved, 10/10.
Thanks for reading, please leave a comment
Later ^_^
"Life is beautiful. Really, it is. Full of beauty and illusions. Life is great. Without it, you'd be dead."-Solomon.
Gummo takes place in Xenia, Ohio, a small town that was once struck by a tornado in 1974. That was just a little background work there because the plot mainly consists of (somewhat) unrelated vignettes featuring the town folk, whom all range from: colorful, oddball, questionable disturbed, and insane.
I heard a lot of things about the movie before i saw it, saying that it was disturbing and shocking. And not just that, but the movie was bashed for it's lack of a plot. (i think there might of been more for this, but this is all i can think of.) Personally, i think anyone who said that might of missed the point of gummo. In my opinion, i felt Korine did a great job with the whole film, even for a directorial debut no less. I felt like he painted a shocking and blatantly honest look at american society. The people in this movie aren't cheerful, happy go lucky or anything of the sorts; the lives these people lead are hopeless, nihilistic, and rather dark and slightly repulsive. Gummo also touches upon some rough issues and themes like: racism, homophobia, sexual abuse, poverty, vandalism, grief, violence, animal cruelty, and what have you; nothing in this film is sugar coated just to let you know (hell there's even a part where a guy prostitutes his own sister, who happens to have downs syndrome!).
One thing i need to mention is the shooting. Most of the film was shot on a 35mm, but there were other parts were filmed on different (and also very old) set of cameras: polaroid, VHS, Hi-8, 16mm, and 8mm cameras were used to achieve a cheap, home movie-esque style of filming quality which i thought worked very very well for the movie.
The music is interesting ensemble of tunes that range from classics like madonna's "like a prayer", buddy holly's "everyday", and roy orbison's "crying" to the traditional children's song "my little rooster" and even to popular metal bands like sleep, burzum, eyehategod, bathory, and brujeria were used for the soundtrack. The music, overall, really fits in well for the tone of the movie.
As for the acting, i have never heard of any of these actors before, but regardless, they all did a great job of playing their roles. I also wanna give a shoutout to jacob reynolds as one of the film's main characters, solomon. He did a fine job of playing his character whose troubled and alienated.
Overall, Gummo is a movie that blew me away with it's style and creativity. While not really disturbing, it is a very weird film i'll admit, but it does one thing that most movies of it's kind do right: show us that the world isn't all sunshine and rainbows and can be, more often than not, a dark and gritty place. and we just have to live with it.
As much as i highly recommend this, i can only do so for anyone over the age of 17, and is more open minded on such matter present in the movie.
I give Gummo, a well deserved, 10/10.
Thanks for reading, please leave a comment
Later ^_^
"Life is beautiful. Really, it is. Full of beauty and illusions. Life is great. Without it, you'd be dead."-Solomon.
Posted by
Lordcrab86
| May 14, 2010 2:06 PM |
1 comments
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Valkian24 | May 15, 2010 4:47 AM
From what you've explained, it sounds really fucked up but I can agree that society can be messed up these days.
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