In 1995, filmmaker Harmony Korine broke out with the indie hit film Kids, which was written by Korine and directed by Larry Clark. A few years later, Korine released his directorial debut Gummo with a sharp division with film critics and audiences. It’s a hard movie to love and an easy movie to hate, while it’s mostly seen as a challenging and controversial film — thanks to its style, subject matter, and unlikeable and lost characters. In fact, this writer absolutely hated this movie when it was released in 1997. And 27 years later, this writer still hates this movie. However, there is a touch of daylight that can be seen, if you can get past all of the ugliness.
From two boys who hunt stray cats for money to a mute boy who plays the accordion and wears a pair of pink bunny ears, Gummo follows the people of a small town called Xenia, Ohio after a tornado ravaged it a few years earlier. The film is loosely told in vignettes and follows the lives of young adults and teenagers in a very poor community in the Midwest.
Throughout the film, Korine emphasizes the repulsiveness of the characters, their homes, and their small town lives, while showing off the grotesque and the obscene in poverty — especially when boredom takes over. If you’re unemployed, you have nowhere to go and nothing to do, so you huff glue, drown cats, pimp out your disabled sister, and wrestle kitchen chairs to pass the time.
Gummo is offensive, ugly, disturbing, borderline exploitative, and mostly unwatchable. But, it seems like Korine has something on his mind in showcasing such a vile film. Although it’s mostly unclear from most of the film itself, Gummo does seem to have themes of decay in America — both moral and financial.
In Gummo, all of the characters are dirt poor and perform reprehensible things, but there’s a trio of sisters led by Dot, played by Chloë Sevigny (Boys Don’t Cry, Last Days of Disco), who practice kindness and caring, as they search for their missing cat. However, the film seems to not have the same empathy for these characters as they do for their missing cat, as one of them is molested and sexually assaulted by a middle-aged man “trying to help them.” In the world of Gummo, kindness is rewarded with an unwanted hand between your legs.
The Criterion Collection saw it fit to add Gummo to their prestigious catalog of films to the shock and delight of their fans. Is Gummo a misunderstood masterpiece, or just a piece of trash — like how people perceive the characters and setting of the film? It’s a tough call. Although Harmony Korine is considered an important filmmaker and an auteur director in his own right, his debut is a tough hang and only reserved for those with a strong stomach for misery and the grotesque.
