It seems that during every generation there is a kind of normal way in which to present the media, especially movies. Most times when you go to the movies with an important other or your family, you invest in a movie that has a big budget to incorporate cool and advanced special effects, to hire big name actors and actresses that already have their names out, and lastly to promote the movie extensively. High definition TVs, blue ray players, IMAX theaters- they all are the new, heady ways in which we watch (should watch) film. This being said, there are film makers out there who want to be as distant and distinct from that perfect, pretty, Hollywood order of making films. They want to highlight something more subtle, something more profound, and something lying in the arid frontiers of the shadows. Harmony Korine is one of those film directors who has attached a nuclear bomb to the conventional order of making films and in the wake of the chemical destruction, he hits record. Korine has come out with a new movie, Trash Humpers. You should be dismayed because its protagonists literally have fetishes with humping trash. I learned about this distinct movie from a positive article on indiewire.com (http://www.indiewire.com/article/trash_humpers_review/).
The journalist of this particular article, Eric Kohn, describes the movie cautiously all the while hinting at the poetry of destruction. The movie is shot in VHS and it follows a “psychotic family with shriveled mugs resembling Freddy Kruger live(ing) together in an undisclosed suburban setting, mulling about their deranged existence while engaging in eerie behaviors and the occasional murder.” Kohn tells us that the movie is shot quickly from scene to scene with an almost random feel. Korine will shoot one aspect of their lives and cut the movie to another. The flow of the movie does not seem to be in a linear fashion like most of the movies you see every day. For instance, in its trailer it shows a scene of two older type men with prosthetic faces humping trash cans, with great force, in an ally way with a single street lamp illuminating their thrusts. All the while they are humping, a young women sits on the side by a fence and looks off to the distance in boredom. Then after that scene, the camera brings us to a backyard where these men ride bicycles around in cycle, with plastic babies dragging behind the bikes on string. Writing the sequence of this movie is a very hard task and if you have the eyes to sit through the movie, then do so. But, the movie has not been distributed to your local mall movie theaters and such. Non-conventional movie theaters like the IFC in NYC are more likely to be open to such a bold movie.
I think the release of the movie is very interesting and great. I have a natural biased to liking Korine’s movies because they strike me with such a bold energy every moment I watch because it is unlike any other movie watching experience I have ever been accustomed to. Like the plot line is so skewed but it is interesting because the movie comes together like a scrap book of profound images. The boldness, the absurd, makes Trash Humpers a distinct movie. But I think there is even more to this movie that makes it socially compelling. For one, he shoots the film in VHS. In a generation that is anal about the high quality of the movie medium, Korine is more concerned with the effect that the viewer will take away from the film. That is a true auteur ambition. Korine is not a slave to the conventional order of making movies, much like how African Americans had to be obedient in their TV roles in the 50s and 60s. Korine will make a movie that deals in the shadows of Americaa with prevision that deals with the vulgar realties of the absurd. He should be praised for being ambitious in a time where movies are dominated by big budgets, and big actors with big white teeth.
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