Filmmaker Harmony Korine Shows Signs Of Growing In julien donkey - boy
The Dallas Morning News / November 13, 1999
By Chris Vognar
Plenty of people write clever novels, plays or scripts based on the idea of separating life from art. But for Harmony Korine, creator of julien donkey - boy,the issue rings with frightening relevance.
"For me, there is no real line," says the 25 - year - old director. "I don't know if I'll ever be able to separate them. The stories I want to tell and the things I want to do have to come from the inside out. Otherwise, I feel like it's fake. I have to embed it within my consciousness."
His first two films, according to many critics, should have stayed there. Kids, which he wrote for Larry Clark, was a lurid look at aimless adolescents and their casual cruelty. His follow - up and directorial debut, Gummo, has a devoted fringe following, including actor Johnny Depp, who describes it as "One of the most truthful pieces of filmmaking in a long time." But it appalled a majority of the mainstream. Critic Leonard Maltin described it as "Pointless, plotless, mind - numbingly awful."
Not that Mr. Korine would particularly care - he has always aimed to set himself apart from the Hollywood masses. Now, with the highly experimental julien donkey - boy, his talent appears to be catching up with his vision. A fragmented, collagelike portrait of a schizophrenic young man [a devastating performance from Ewen Bremner], julien is winning over viewers who had previously dismissed Mr. Korine as a self - absorbed shockmeister.
In short, he appears to be growing up, even as he continues to play by his own rules.
"I see film in a different way," Mr. Korine said at the Toronto Film Festival. Kind and soft -spoken, he hardly fits the enfant terrible image. "I make movies the way I want to see them made, with images I haven't seen before. I wouldn't make movies like this if other people were. But since no one else is showing me images the way I think they need to be seen, I make them myself."
In julien, that means a very elliptical story with much improvised dialogue, and a visual style jarringly different from any recent theatrical film [Chris Marker's art classic La Jette comes to mind]. Stills and video are the main components, woven into a haunting tapestry of images.
"It was a very visual approach, like the idea of a photograph," says Mr. Korine. "Say I wanted to see a blind girl sitting on a toilet seat. That was the image I would start with, then I'd go over what would happen and what should happen in the scene and direct the actors in that way. Most of the dialogue is improvised."
The inspiration for julien came from Mr. Korine's schizophrenic uncle, with whom young Harmony spent time growing up in Tennessee. [Mr. Korine originally wanted his uncle to star in the film, but the uncle remains in a mental institution]. Harmony recalls being frightened by this family member who heard voices in his head, but he was also intrigued. And as he became more immersed in film, he grew angry at Hollywood's standard depictions of the mentally ill.
"Any time I would see anyone depicted as mentally ill in movies, it was like Rain Man, this sort of cute, lovable eccentric. I was disgusted by that. I wanted this film to show it how it really is."
Mr. Korine hasn't necessarily become a braver filmmaker, although julien is a tremendous stylistic leap from his previous efforts. Rather, he just doesn't seem as unrelentingly, exclusively and perhaps immaturely bleak as he once did. julien donkey -boy is no walk in the park, but it feels like the work of a man learning to blend his provocateur spirit with a genuine artistic sensibility.
Now that he's become the first American filmmaker to make a movie under the guidelines of the Danish Dogme95 guidelines, Mr. Korine is ready to keep on growing. His next project, Jokes, is an omnibus of three stories based on Milton Berle one - liners. He and Gus Van Sant are already on board to direct segments; he's hoping to get either fellow Dogme member Lars Von Trier or julien star and German film legend Werner Herzog to contribute as well.
"It will be almost formal," he says. "The story is almost linear from beginning to end."
Almost. But probably not quite.
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