25 years of ‘Gummo’ – Harmony Korine’s blissful ode to nihilism
Operating on the very fringes of modern American cinema, filmmaker and auteur Harmony Korine embraces a style and form that seems to contradict everything we know about modern movies. Raw and untamed, Korine’s films capture a surreal authenticity, offering a remarkable insight into the subterranean mood of contemporary America, a fact that has been true ever since the release of the director’s debut feature film 25 years ago, Gummo.
Scruffy, authentic and seeming to be the direct product of its environment, Gummo presents a brutally honest depiction of contemporary America that spoke to a disgruntled generation who could see themselves in such a world. Tagging along in the aimless adventures of two friends across a forgotten corner of US heartland, Korine weaves a peculiar tapestry that speaks to the nihilistic attitudes of youth in the 1990s.
In equal parts, both a celebration of pure freedom and rebellious debauchery, Korine’s film is an ode to chaotic nihilism in the centre of forgotten America. Making the film at just 23 years of age, Korine bridged the gap between his boisterous childhood and promising future career, making a film that revels in subversive bad taste whilst showing flashes of something far more profound beneath its grit and mud.
Roaming the battered wasteland of Xenia, Ohio, which has recently been wind-swept by a tornado, Solomon (Jacob Reynolds) and Tummler (Nick Sutton) search for meaning in the rubble, interacting with the sparse locals whilst killing feral cats along the way. Whilst the destructive winds have battered the area, leaving abandoned homes and vehicles in its wake, the adolescent population of Xenia don’t seem to protest their new reality, making the bleak wasteland their new existence.
What follows is a meditative drift through the ravaged land, experiencing the world through small vignettes of several one-time characters and bizarre situations—exploring the creaks, aches and squeals of an otherwise silent, deceased wasteland. It’s a disturbing fairytale, replacing a fantasy world for magical realism, led by an impoverished boy donning pink bunny ears escorting us silently through the land like an omniscient sage.
Gliding through the decayed back gardens, dirtied kitchens and stagnant swimming pools, the town’s inhabitants hold a psyche reflected in the barren land, wandering like the desert’s tumbleweed. Brothers engage in a thudding fistfight, a gang of youths pathetically trash a chair, and a deluded tennis player enthusiastically trains despite his apparent shortcomings. “My serve got faster; it increased by 8%. I can hit a ball 65 mph,” he utters, with sombre doubt in his voice.
It’s an American dream gone wrong, where fantasies of success have resided to wither and droop, manifesting themselves within a hopeless corner of the continent. Filth and nihilism have spread like the plague to the helpless inhabitants, forming a grisly fever dream. Exposing the most obscure corners of humanity, Korine weaves a nightmarish vision of a forgotten community. A post-apocalyptic town minus any world-ending catastrophe, where, instead, hopelessness thrives.
Never has such a human environment felt so alien.