“GUMMO” (1997)

Starring: Jacob Reynolds, Nick Sutton & Chloë Sevigny
Written & Directed by Harmony Korine

Polly Staffle Rating: **

Small towns are strange places. People always seem weirder and do crazier things in places like Xenia, Ohio. The Harmony Korine movie “Gummo” totes itself as being about Xenia and how it never recovered from a tornado. But the film is about more than that. It's a piece of fiction that could play as a documentary for most small cities.

The film mostly centers around two young trouble makers - Solomon and Tummler. They basically ride their bikes around town all day looking for cats to kill and glue to sniff. They sell the cats to an obviously corrupt butcher and use the money to buy a mentally handicapped prostitute. And lots of strange characters, some having to do with these two and others not seeming to have anything to do with the movie at all, are intercut between all of this.

It seems Korine tries to go for the freak show laughs here instead of trying to tell a realistic story like his screenplay for “Kids.” Some scenes work really well, others don't and are a bit uncomfortable.

Underneath it all lies the true story of little towns. These places are boring miserable places where nothing ever happens and there's nothing to do all day. Poor unsupervised kids with no place to go, trying to create their own fun can equal some really scary outcomes.

The only parental figures in the film are either getting drunk and arm wrestling each other, trying to molest young girls or playfully pointing a gun at their son to make him smile. When you see this, you start to realize why these kids are so messed up.

To me, the arm wrestling scene was one of the best scenes and it kind of sums up the film. A group of older people are hanging around in a kitchen drinking beer and taking turns arm wrestling. A guy that reminded me of Toby Keith is the biggest person present and they match him up against an extremely short African American midget. The little person wins and “Toby” goes crazy and smashes the table. Later “Toby” has a chair and is pretend wrestling it as everyone there cheers him on. It's a very odd moment.

There are lots of other surrealistic moments here that seem either too real to be made up or too fake to be real, if that makes any sense. A boy dressed as a rabbit comes and goes through the film. In one scene he stumbles across two other boys playing with fake guns. The foul-mouthed boys with guns pretend to shoot the “rabbit” all the while screaming expletives. The “rabbit” plays along, falling to the ground, and for a second you think he must have had a heart attack or something because he just lays there as they check his pockets for money. In yet another scene we see Solomon having a bath. While he is in the tub, which is full of brown water, his mother serves him spaghetti on a TV tray and washes his hair. It is a sweet cinematic moment that would fit perfectly into any heartwarming picture.

Not really a drama or a comedy, “Gummo” can be safely classified as an experimental art film. I was reminded of the 2003 released documentary “Tarnation.” In it, the director uses a mixture of photos, audio and film stock to tell his life story. The technique of the documentary was good, but there wasn't anything interesting enough to hold it together. All of these elements and more are present here, making me feel that movie was inspired by this one. With that, I appreciate this film more and “Tarnation” less.

Having graduated high school in a small town, I can verify this is an accurate portrayal of people in a place like it. I had distant relatives and neighbors like this. I saw regular weirdoes who walked or rode their bikes around town all day that were a lot like the cast. These places are perfect breeding grounds for ignorance and mischief.

- CCF, February 2006