Julien Donkey-Boy

Much like European directors Thomas Vinterberg, Lars Von Trier, Jean Luc Goddard, and Werner Herzog (who plays the father!), young American director Harmony Korine is not content to just produce a product. This is film as art. This is film as statement. This is film as reality. It is not escapism-quite the contrary; "Julien" offers nothing in the way of fantasy (other than it's a 'film' and therefore not 'real'). Rather, it injects the viewer into the nervous system of an American most would pretend doesn't exist. It follows a moment in time for Julien, a mentally deranged young man, and his family as they trudge through their mundane, yet disturbed lives. Opening with Julien apparently murdering a young boy in the woods, the viewer is immediately tuned in to just how disturbed he is. From here, the film gives a 'fly on the wall' view of his family; an exasperated father (Herzog), abusive out of his own failures-both personal and familial. A classically driven brother who, through amatuer wrestling, tries to impress daddy-to no avail. Rounding the unit out is his sister (Chloe Sevigny), a ray of light (albeit tainted) within the molassas thick dispair. As the film progresses, we get bits and pieces of a family in sharp decline; the madness isn't all Juliens' that's for sure. Information is given in fits and starts, like bad dreams in still shots. Being a so called 'Dogme' film, "Julien Donkey Boy" has a voyueristic bent, akin to watching a home movie you found on the street. This feeling is only heightened by the seemingly improvised acting (I say 'seemingly' because it can't be ALL impov; forget what you've heard "Julien" DOES have a plot, just not a conventional one). Obviously, "Julien Donkey Boy" is not for everybody, just as "Fitzcarraldo" is not for everyone. I personally found this film compelling. This is the way some people actually live- someone you know, maybe even yourself, and that's why this film works. If I have any criticism, it's not of "Julien" per se, but the fact that all of Korine's films have dealt with teenagers, therefore probably making it easier for some to dismiss his work as merely 'fringe'.

Do not expect to be entertained, and do not expect to be overwhelmed by the aesthetic of this film. Julien Donkey Boy is no more beautiful than its subject. Harmony Korine, in directing and writing this film, has done exactly what he set out to do - he has created a concentrated dose of family life with schizophrenia. In saying that the experience is concentrated, what I mean is that the film uses exaggeration rather liberally in order to condense its somewhat impossibly defined subject matter. Although there are certainly interwoven story arcs for the main characters, there is no central plot, no linearity, no unfragmented reality. The film itself, therefore, is just a little unhinged.

One of my older sisters was schizophrenic. You would have to condense a couple decades worth of her psychotic episodes into a couple of hours to get anywhere near the level of constant distress that is depicted in this film. I most closely related to the character of Pearl, Julien's pregnant sister, but recognized aspects of my own family in all of the characters. What I am trying to say is that there is certainly some truth to what this movie says and the archetypal characters portrayed, its truth may be hard to recognize if you haven't lived through it.

Living with a schizophrenic will bring out and amplify your own nature - and if you are open to it, you will be a better person. It is also, however, fairly easy to allow the experience to overwhelm you. People who have never been exposed to schizophrenia in any but a superficial way will find most of the film's characters and vignettes very difficult to believe. I am pretty sure Korine knew this going in.

Korine has portrayed schizophrenia in a sensitive and truthful, but nevertheless utterly disturbing and somewhat unrealistically condensed way. Every directorial decision is meant to create a sense of realism. The method is very effective, and the film is essentially successful. Julien intentionally and clearly positions its audience as voyeurs, using hand-held photography almost exclusively and allowing character- development (the bulk of the film) to dictate the pace and rhythm of every scene. All of the acting is superb, and although there are very few feel-good moments in this film, it may be somewhat cathartic for folks like me, and somewhat (painfully) enlightening for those who grew up in less dysfunctional, or more-traditionally dysfunctional, families.

I will say that this film is Art at the risk of having raw vegetables thrown at me. It is not "a movie", as in "Hey, Mary, let's go down to the multiplex and catch Julien Donkey-Boy." No. I have the mixed pleasure of understanding this film's subject matter as a clinician. The film conveyed, in my educated opinion, a sensual experience of being very close to the dysfunction it displays. What may seem like unsophisticated art school techniques with sound and image to the casual viewer rang absolutely affectively true to me, as a person who has worked in locked units of state mental hospitals with these families. As entertainment, the film is terrible, as it should be. I would not advise buying an extra large popcorn. It is disturbing and enlightening. Whether or not it belongs in a theater, museum or a classroom is probably debatable. Werner Herzog was brilliant. Ewen Bremner blew me away. Bremner's acting range is amazing. I look forward to seeing him some day in a "regular guy" role.

Let's be brutally honest here for a second; if you choose to check out Julien Donkey-Boy after reading this review, I will consider you a brave and ambitious soul. If you like the film after watching it, I will consider you an admirable one. Harmony Korine's Julien Donkey-Boy is a difficult film to endure for ninety-nine minutes; a complex and crippling one. It twists your emotions, saddens the soul, and repulses every preconceived notion, or lack thereof, you had entering the film in the first place.

Korine's first picture in 1997 was called Gummo, and it stands as one of the most lurid, controversial pictures of the nineties decade. The film utilized a non-linear narrative, stringing scenes together with little continuity and providing an unblinking look at a scummy town in Ohio that was ravaged by a tornado and never fully recovered. It was a true cinematic wonder, and still remains that way in 2013. Korine followed Gummo up with Julien Donkey-Boy, a film done in the style of "Dogme 95," a filmmaking movement that focused on the naturalism of dialog, story, and plot-progression by using hand-held cameras, source sound, lighting, and props. It also prohibited that directors be credited from their work, so Harmony Korine isn't even known as the official director of this film.

The plot: Julien (Ewen Bremner) is a young, schizophrenic man who lives in his home with his extremely dysfunctional family, consisting of his instigating father (the great German director Werner Herzog), his passive brother Chris (Evan Neumann), and his sister Pearl (Chloë Sevigny), who is carrying Julien's child. We see the world through Julien's eyes, as he rarely leaves the screen for more than a minute. We see the unrelenting madness that unfolds in his home, and sometimes, we become submerged so deeply into Julien's baffling, schizophrenic mind that the film begins to become incoherent and blurry. When I say "blurry," I mean that quite literally, as the film was shot on a DV tape, converted to 16mm (already a sketchy transfer), and finally blown up to 35mm, giving the film an extremely grainy and visually washed-out look.

There's something to be said about Ewen Bremner, who is completely terrific here in a beyond difficult role. Bremner was made famous by his role in Trainspotting, and here, he embodies a character unlike anything else currently present in his filmography. This is the kind of role veteran actors fear taking on, and this is the kind of the story veteran directors neuter or make easier to digest for the public. Not Korine; every project he has done thus far has been exercised to almost complete full-force. He's an uncompromising auteur, putting character before plot and impact before publicity to ensure long-term memorability. He's a requirement for cinema.

When I say "uncompromising," take for example the scene where Pearl falls on the ice-rink, with lethal consequences to someone close to her. This scene is polarizing and frightening all the more. It left me with a boiling feeling of sadness, and had such an impact on me that it never left my thoughts for the remainder of the day. Take another scene, for example, when we see how Julien's father shamelessly bullies him by soaking him with the hose and demanding that he "don't shiver." Or even the scene where Julien pretends he's God and Adolf Hitler simultaneously.

I can compare this to Gummo in the regard of shock, but Julien Donkey-Boy is showing something a tiny bit more distant from reality. To elaborate, Gummo is showing a culture and a town that very well could be real, but it isn't directly based off of any specific part of the world. Yet the problems dealt with in that film since as loss of innocence, vandalism, animal abuse, rape, etc are apparent in our society. Schizophrenia is a mental-disease with effects like those portrayed in the film, and therefore, the reality is more distorted as we are seeing it from the title character's perspective. Both pictures are viscerally gripping for the opposite reason; one shows a toxic reality, while the one merges toxic reality with an even more hypnotic and smothering one.

Julien Donkey-Boy is a hard film to get through, and at one-hundred minutes, can be occasionally maddening. We're being bombarded with so much repulsion and depravity that it becomes a bit of an overload. With that said, the overall disjointedness and the grainy aesthetic can be a bit much, too. But all those reasons are the same reason that I liked the film so much. Korine is a force of nature, one who seems to often rebel, test, and manipulate the rules of cinema to fit his own tendencies, regardless of how explicit or inane they may be. I wouldn't have him, or this film, any other way the more I think about it.

Starring: Ewen Bremner, Chloë Sevigny, Werner Herzog, and Evan Neumann. Directed by: Harmony Korine.

Harmony Korine's Julien Donkey-Boy, is nothing less than real filmic art. It chronicles a day or so in the life of Julien, a teenage schizophrenic, and the other family members he lives with: his sister, his frustrated and abusive father, played nicely by Werner Herzog, (of all people), his younger brother, and his grandmother.

The effect is like watching Leave it to Beaver on acid--a haunting picture of a family paralyzed by their own dysfunctionality, so pervasive it is that it virtually crushes any hope of what most of us would call a "normal" life. The real tragedy is knowing that we are merely glimpsing a fictional account of what many real families with similar situations have to endure. The film isn't a success solely due to its effectively disturbing chronicle of a mentally ill teen, but rather, HOW it chronicles the life of this character. Korine is a master of using film to communicate story and messages, specifically through the use of editing, cinematography and visual effects. This is amazing, since at only 27, Korine has more visual ownership of the medium than do most directors with twice his experience.

Yet, Korine's movies are not popular. Most people wouldn't have a clue as to what's going on in them. This is because Korine uses visual symbols and other filmic elements to reveal the plot and character development. And he does this masterfully. For example, in one scene, we see the images as if on a videophone, frame-by-frame, with erratic cuts in the action. Yet, the sound flows as normal. Korine uses this technique to symbolize the main character's fragmented view of the world -- a view that is dramatically distorted from our own. This is brilliant filmmaking -- an example of "show, don't tell" yet through use of film form rather than character action.

Indelibly, it is Korine's unconventional film style, of which a good deal looks experimental, yet all of which is handled expertly, that will also keep him at the fringes of the film world, barring him the popularity he deserves. This is too bad since he brings as much to the art of independent film as Scorcese does to the Hollywood film. Yet Korine will never have the accessibility of the other.

In this film, Korine reveals the character of Julien not only through his actions, but via his reactions to those around him and to his environment. This is a hard task for a filmmaker to achieve since those who don't know the particular "reason" for a scene or for its purpose, will be lost. The film demands an aggressive viewer, one who wants to share the boldness of the director's vision, while deciphering it through his or her own knowledge of film conventions and prior knowledge.

Julien Donkey-Boy is not as emotionally powerful as Korine's previous film, Gummo, yet it is just as important in what it has to say about film as a medium of communication, and, about the people who are living at the margins of society.