julien donkey-boy

Toronto International Film Festival Program Book
1999

julien donkey-boy
Harmony Korine
USA, 1999
94 minutes Colour/35mm
Production Company: Independent Pictures/Forensic/391 Films
Producer: Cary Woods, Scott Macaulay, Robin O’Hara
Screenplay: Harmony Korine
Cinematographer: Anthony Dod Mantle
Editor: Valdis Oskarsdottir
Sound: Brian Miksis
Principal Cast: Ewen Bremner, Chloe Sevigny, Werner Herzog, Evan Neumann, Joyce Korine, Chrissy Kobylak, Alvin Law
Production: Independent Pictures

Harmony Korine is for real. After his masterpiece Gummo was roasted by a confused and unadventurous critical establishment, the film became a cult hit around the world, proving that his art was eminently accessible and at the apex of cool. Yet, Korine is a radical whose cinematic project will have aesthetic repercussions for years to come. Rejecting both the anti-narrative principles of experimental cinema and the clichés of Hollywood narrative, he has restated and amplified his ideas; it was this kind of non-linear storytelling that made Gummo such an intriguing and satisfying work. He is also a provocateur, challenging audiences with politically tough images that are meant to offend those who cannot see their place in his vision. He is, finally, the future of American Cinema.

julien donkey-boy is a companion work to Gummo, especially in Korine’s choice of central character. Assisted by an astonishing and courageous performance by Ewen Bremner from Trainspotting, Korine has created Julien, an adult who expresses himself as a child and sees the resolution of his problems in childlike ways. How this disorients our relationship to him is similar to our revulsion at the faux adult behaviour of Gummo’s kids.

Julien is a difficult character to sit with; he is a jabbering know-it-all abused by his over-the-top, wrestling-obsessed German father (the extraordinary Werner Herzog), hated and ignored by his quiet, serious brother and faced with the enigmatic consequences of his relationship with Pearl, his sister. He has none of the usual self-censoring functions that “normal” human beings employ and so becomes increasingly alienated from those around him until he experiences the early symptoms of schizophrenia.

julien is a beautifully realized film. As its various strands weave slowly together, the impending sense of horror the film evoke forces us to rethink all of our assumptions about the strange characters whose lives we have entered. They become us, human beings not quite capable of resolving love loss and life’s other mysteries into a coherent whole.

julien has recently been declared a “Dogme” project by the Danish arbiters of such things. And, while it certainly stands with The Celebration and The Idiots as a socially confrontational and immediate work of film, it delves so much deeper into the inner workings of cinema as to render this association nearly meaningless.
—Noah Cowan