“JULIEN DONKEY-BOY” (1999)

Starring: Ewen Bremner, Chloë Sevigny, Werner Herzog
& Evan Neumann
Dogme95 #6 Concept by Harmony Korine

Polly Staffle Rating: *

Harmony Korine's schizophrenic uncle inspired him to make “Julien Donkey-Boy.” Korine actually wanted his uncle Eddie to play the lead, but wasn't able to get the clearance from the hospital he lives in. Korine wanted to make a “real” film about someone with mental illness as opposed to the glossed over Hollywood releases. The results are an interesting watch. “Julien Donkey-Boy” succeeds at presenting a surreal and chaotic world, almost as if we are seeing things through the eyes of someone with schizophrenia. But Korine's project fails at being a good film.

The looks of the film may turn some viewers away right off the bat. This is an extremely low budget movie shot on video and blown up to 35mm. I actually think the grainy look helps with the film's overall tone. My problem is with the story - the fact there isn't a story. “Julien Donkey-Boy” is a Dogme95 film. The sixth one made. For those that are unfamiliar with the concept, Dogme95 is a movement that is trying to bring realism back to films. To have your project certified, the rules are fairly simple. You can't use any sound except what you can hear at the time the filming is done, it must be shot on location, any props must have been found at the site, you can't use special lighting or makeup, the camera must be hand held and you can't use a screenplay. Wait a second, what was that last part again? You do not use a script? The point is to stay away from creating an aesthetic or opinionated piece. The director takes himself out of film and what we see isn't his slanted vision, but rather a series of “real” moments. The pieces are regarded as more important than the whole. “I swear to do so by all the means available and at the cost of any good taste...” the Vow of Chastity reads on the official Dogme95 website.

So in other words, let's just say you want to make a movie about a guy who loves to cook and dreams of having his own show on the Food Network. Today you are shooting a very important scene where he cooks for his family and his father finally sees that his son has something special. The dad is a real jerk and has always made fun of his son and called him names like “Chef Boy-or-a-girl” and “Emril La-gay-see.” This is a turning point in the script if you had written one, but you didn't. If you are to shoot the scene of him cooking, you would first have to find a location that had a stove. You can't shoot him in front of a blue screen and add the stove later and you can't build a set with a stove. I am fine with that. But then things start to get tricky. The food he prepares has to be present at the location as well. So he has to open the cabinets and refrigerator and on the spot decide what to cook. Let's just say all he can find to whip up is a can of pork-n-beans, some fish sticks, bologna and bananas. Now what the hell is he going to make with those ingredients? Tacos. He mashes up the fish sticks and throws their mush in the beans. He dices the bananas up like tomatoes. The slices of bologna are then used as a tortilla and filled with the pork-n-fish-n-beans with bananas on top. Dinner is served. Now the family has to dig in and enjoy the meal. Now it gets even trickier. Do the actors now eat the food and talk about how great the meal is? Highly unlikely. Don't try this recipe at home by the way. Option two is for the family to bash the poor guy's dreams. Cameras are rolling and there is no script so the family chows down and... they vomit all over each other. From now on the whole family calls the cook names like “Wofgang Puke.” Eventually he kills the family, chops them up, eats them and instead of a feel good movie about a guy becoming the host of his own cooking show, we end up with a snuff film about a cannibal. You starting to see the Dogme95 problems of film making?

Back to “Julien Donkey-Boy,” actor Ewen Bremner is brilliant as Julien. So much that I assumed he really was the way he was. I was watching a Dogme95 film after all. But it turns it he studied Korine's uncle for the part. It is a shame Bremner's performance gets lost in the mess of this film. Chloë Sevigny's character Pearl is pregnant. I assumed surely she must have really been pregnant in real life since this was a certified Dogme95 production. Turns out that was false as well. Korine, who was dating Sevigny at the time, claims he did all he could to try and impregnate her for the film, but was unsuccessful. Dogme95 films are also not to contain “superficial action” and murder is given as an example. But there are a number of things in this film that could be debated as being such. The film opens with a violent scene in which Julien does harm to a boy. Later, Julien's brother Chris (Evan Neumann) wrestles a trash can. Even later, Julien dressed in a bra and panties wrestles Chris. Julien's father, played by Werner Herzog, wears a gas mask for no explained reason in one scene and sprays his son Chris with a water hose in another.

There are other moments I will not go into for fear of giving away too much, but I was left wondering if anything real and not superficial was actually in the film. Turns out many of the scenes involving Julien wondering the streets of New York and Sevigny shopping for baby clothes were shot with hidden cameras and all dialogue was improvised. That's about it though. Korine's grandmother is in the film and many of the scenes were shot at her house. Had this been a movie about Korine or his uncle and she was playing the grandmother then that would be a real element. Here it's not. There are also blind characters such as an ice skater and a rapping “black albino from Alabamba” that are really blind. These characters seem to be there for no apparent reason. Korine has a tendency to do things like that. He did the same thing in “Gummo.” It usually comes off exploitive like he is a shock jock laughing at them and saying “look at these freaks” instead of someone who cares that just wants to show us the world unfiltered.

Although I feel his intentions were good with this film, Korine's arrogance of making something “real” is what makes this film self destruct. It's not a documentary. It's not real. So why play this pretentious game of having an improvised script and bend the Dogme95 rules to fit you? There's nothing wrong with improvisation. I think when things are improvised, you can come out with wonderful results sometimes. The key is to have a base and improvise off it. Korine supposedly shot 86 hours of footage over 25 days. He then cut that down to be a 90-minute film. I don't call that improvisation. I can respect that Korine wanted to create a film that represents mental illness in a serious and “real” way. I just think a well thought out screenplay would have helped. Scott Hicks did a wonderful job showing us the mental collapse of a musical genius with “Shine.” The film was based on real life classical pianist David Helfgott. I was reminded of “Shine” while watching this film due to the similar speech patterns of Julien and David. “Shine” was about someone real, but has no false beliefs that it itself is “real.” It is a movie that captures the essence of the real man. “Julien Donkey-Boy” is also inspired by a real person. It, however, ends up being a film pretending to be something it's not.

- CCF, February 2006