"Gummo" Dislike and praise, shadow and light, Harmony Korine's shocking debut work

What are the merits and demerits of a cult work that has not faded even after a quarter of a century?

The finished film "Gummo" received mixed reviews, with viewers either hating it or praising it, or both. This strange film, which combines the ugly and the beautiful, death metal and the sweet voice of Roy Orbison, and the occasional magical moment in the midst of a life of extreme poverty, won the International Federation of Film Critics Award at the 1997 Venice International Film Festival.

I once interviewed Harmony Korine when he came to Japan for the Japanese release of "Gummo." It was the most memorable interview I've ever had as a writer. I rummaged through my closet but couldn't find the recordings from that time, so unfortunately I can't write in detail about what Harmony said here, but everything he said was unusual and intense.

The interview took place in a suite at the hotel in Tokyo where Harmony was staying. When I first entered the room, the bright living room was cluttered with things and a young man who looked like a typical street kid was wandering around, wearing jeans worn extremely low on his hips. The interpreter said something like a tamer: "Ask me questions, and I'll catch them and get the answers!"

When I handed her a sample copy of the magazine I was going to cover, Harmony opened it with interest, sat on the sofa, and started cutting out pages with scissors. She seems to be pasting everything that caught her eye into a scrapbook. In the middle of this, Chloe Sevigny appeared from the bedroom, dressed stylishly, and said she was going shopping, before giving Harmony a kiss and leaving.

He was restless throughout the interview, and just as the interpreter had said, he kept standing up and sitting down, but he answered all of my questions politely, and although his comments were passionate, they were well-reasoned. I was a bit taken aback at first, but in the end the interview went smoothly, and when I was leaving he asked me for a handshake and said with confidence, "I'm going to keep making movies forever!" (It was a long time ago, so please forgive me if my memory is a little off.)

Although his career has had some twists and turns since then, in recent years he has continued to produce challenging films, true to his words, even casting star actors such as Selena Gomez and Matthew McConaughey in films such as “ Spring Breakers ” (2012) and “The Beach Bums” (2019).

"Beach Bum" trailer

On the other hand, there is also criticism. In 2021, a documentary film titled "The Kids" was released, which follows the lives of the street kids who appeared in " Kids ". There is no way to watch it in Japan yet, but the fellow skaters who appeared in the film at the time are said to be expressing their complicated feelings about Harmony, who severed ties with them after "Kids" was completed.

Nick Sutton, whose acting fee from Gummo led him further into the quagmire of drug addiction, revealed his complicated feelings about Gummo in a 2020 interview. Sutton thanked Harmony for creating a film that honestly depicts the reality of extreme poverty in America and finds beauty in it, but he also pointed out the exploitative aspect of making a spectacle of poverty for the entertainment of the artistic elite. "It's not simply exploitative, it's more complicated than that, but yes, I do feel it is," he said.

Certainly, Harmony Korine broke many taboos as a young and ambitious artistic supremacist, bringing a new dimension to film expression, and the poetry of "Gummo" has not faded even after a quarter century. However, I think that we should not overlook the fact that there are lights and shadows that can only be seen now that Harmony has become a successful artist, and that "Gummo" was a powerful work related to light and shadow.

Reference materials:

Gus Van Sant's comment:

A conversation with Werner Herzog

Harmony Korine: On Filmmaking

52 Insite Harmony Korine, Interview

2019 Interview with the cast of Harmony Korine's film Gummo (A reunion project where the performers met for the first time in 22 years)

The Sun Is Flat Organization Nick Sutton, Interview

Text: Akira Murayama

Born in 1971. Writes articles for magazines, newspapers, movie sites, etc. Representative of “ShortCuts,” a review site for distribution-based works.

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