Anyone who’s ever studied logic is familiar with the concept of falsifiability, but it never seems to occur to most people that the basic idea has much broader application. In a nutshell, an assertion or premise is falsifiable if you can at least conceive of evidence that would controvert it; if such evidence is impossible to even imagine, much less produce, then you’ve got something unfalsifiable. Movies, I submit, ought to be falsifiable—or, to put it another way, no film can be considered good unless one can conceive of a similar film, poorly executed, which would be quite bad. All of which is a roundabout way of saying that Harmony Korine’s fourth feature, Trash Humpers, will appeal exclusively to the handful of folks who derive their shaky sense of self-worth from enjoying films like Trash Humpers. Nor do these people actually need to see Trash Humpers in order to conclude that it’s awesome, since its perceived awesomeness is encoded in its conceptual DNA. Korine simply describing the idea in a couple of sentences would serve just as well.
Allow me to demonstrate. Trash Humpers features three actors (including Korine and his wife) wearing grotesque masks designed to make them look like obscene parodies of the white-trash elderly. These are not characters in any conventional sense—they remain nameless and undifferentiated throughout, and the film as a whole has no discernable narrative. Instead, Korine offers up a random series of discrete, meaningless vignettes. The trio, as advertised, engage in frottage with various trash receptacles. They break stuff with hammers, or by throwing it high into the air and watching it crash to the ground. They chant nonsense phrases and tunelessly hum folk ditties. They somehow get three hookers to kneel on a bed and then take turns smacking them on the ass. Korine captures all of their cretinous activity in deliberately ugly-looking VHS, complete with bad tracking and archaic onscreen text.
Having read the above paragraph, you already know – I all but guarantee – whether or not you’ll like the film. How can I say that so confidently? Because what Korine is doing in Trash Humpers can’t be done well, or done poorly, or done indifferently. Execution isn’t a factor—the movie, by design, has no conventional virtues, so there’s literally no way to screw it up. You either respond to this kind of thing or you don’t; if you do, seeing the film is superfluous. I am not at all kidding when I say that I could go out this weekend with a camcorder and make my own version of Trash Humpers, falsely putting Korine’s name on it, and absent evidence to the contrary you’d never know the difference. “Put on these masks. Okay, now act like horny, destructive morons. And… action!” Major fall festivals, here I come.
It’s important to note that this isn’t just a case of one bourgeois critic not connecting with Korine’s underground sensibility. Granted, his freak-show aesthetic has always struck me as an empty hipster pose, but I quite liked parts of julien donkey-boy, and while I despised Gummo, at least that film had a certain repulsive beauty—it was clearly composed. Trash Humpers, by contrast, is the grotesque, exploitation-flick equivalent of the gallery painting that’s nothing but a mile of blank canvas with a single red dot in the precise center—an idea so simple and stupid that it had never occurred to anyone before, inevitably to be hailed by a select few as bold and visionary, a triumph of originality. That it’s being taken seriously by intelligent cineastes is cause for despair. The title is one word too long.
Mike D’Angelo / © 2009 notcoming.com
Hmm. A persuasive review, and I’m not Korine film at all (except for maybe the first 30 mins of Mister Lonely), but how would you respond to this excerpt from Dennis Lim’s review, that suggests the film’s ‘appeal’ isn’t purely conceptual:
It’s full of indelible sunburst moments, strange, sober glimmers of beauty and poetry peeking through the bleakness: yogic poses against a radioactive sun setting in the background, night scenes illuminated by the soft pink glow of sodium-vapour street lights, an infant reaching up to touch the disfigured face of its mama humper.
I think the problem here is that the reference isn’t cinema. It’s the specificially 1980s heritage of the “found VHS tape.” While I find that to be as worthwhileÑand perhaps more excitingÑan influence as a great work of “cinema,” I would be willing to bet the left side of my body that you very much do not.
As for the declaration that you could make a film like Trash Humpers in a weekend, try it, please! I think the process might teach you an interesting lesson.
Sounds like a film that should be playing on loop in an art gallery or modern art museum instead of in a cinema. Brings to mind the experimental art video the teacher in GHOST WORLD plays for the class. Father. Mirror. Father. Mirror. Dry. Heaving. Ensues. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrSIV1jyyN4
This review echoes the layman’s take on modern/experimental art. Could one not go out and make L’Avventura after the idea of it was in the public domain? Is it really the place of a critic to say they could do the job of a filmmaker? I’ve not seen the film (yet), but what you’re saying here is that it appears no choices, rational or otherwise, have been re. camera position, editing, lighting, etc?
No, one could not go out and make L’Avventura, which is as masterfully composed as any film in cinema history. And yes, I am saying that no discernible thought went into Trash Humpers beyond the basic concept.
As for Dennis Lim’s “indelible sunburst moments,” all I can say is that if you’re determined to find something, you will. I’d love to sit down with him and have him point such moments out to me.
M. Tully: Exactly which found VHS tapes of the ’80s resemble Trash Humpers?
There is one found ’80s VHS tape that most directly springs to mind with regards to Trash Humpers. It was the summer of ‘98 in Athens, Georgia, and a friend handed me a tape, saying, “Watch this.” It was this crazy redneck family just filming their everyday lives, but it got increasingly creepy and foreboding (exactly what Harmony refers to in our conversation at www.hammertonail.com though it definitely wasn’t the same video). All I can remember is that at one point the woman says something to the effect of, “I can’t have sex no more. My furburger done sewed up.” That summer, this videotape occupied more of my serious film-school/aspiring-filmmaker’s brain space than, say, something like L’Avventura. Perhaps that’s why Trash Humpers shocked me with its feeling of accidental authenticity, since this “affect” is more difficult to pull off than you might think. I’ve spent a LOT of time contemplating this concept, so to see a film that spoke to it so directly, that BECAME it… I truly think it’s one of the most original American efforts of the year.
The truth is that this is like arguing with my parents about politics so no need to belabor the point (I already know your comeback, I already know my comeback to that, etc.), but I will say that very, very important choices were made in making a film like Trash Humpers. That’s why I suggested you try it yourself. It’s like telling my dad that writing about movies is an actual job. Until you’ve sat down and tried to write a review (or, in your case, thousands of awesome ones), it’s like being spoken to in a language that you’ve never heard before. That’s tough to swallow, and often leads to outright dismissal.
It’s also worth thinking about Trash Humpers in the context of William Eggleston’s great DIY shot-on-video piece, Stranded in Canton, which Korine has championed for many years. The ‘accidental authenticity’ spoken of above would seem to be an attempt to replicate Eggleston’s pre-reality-tv nirvana when pointing a camera at something happening in a street or a bar or a studio didn’t seem like an entirely devalued act.
MT: I’d like to see you take up my falsifiability challenge — not because I think it will prove me “right,” but because I’m genuinely ready to be convinced, albeit very skeptical that I will be. You say Korine made important choices that extend beyond the basic conception, which implies that you believe that the film could indeed have been made badly had he made different choices. Can you give me an example of how Trash Humpers might have been unsuccesful once conceived? And I don’t mean something inane like “it would’ve sucked had Korine written lots of literate Whit Stillmanesque dialogue for the characters” or “had it been shot in gorgeous 70mm” — honoring the concept as devised, how could Korine (or someone else) have fucked it up? Or, if you prefer, what grievous errors do you imagine that I’d make in my hypothetical alternate version that would reveal me as a poseur in comparison to the genuine article? (I realize this is a bit hefty for a comments section, but even an inkling would be helpful.)
To be honest, I think I’m too stupid to understand what you mean by the falsifiability challenge. From what I gather in the above review, it’s something to the effect of: if you have nothing to compare a movie to – especially negatively – then that movie isn’t valid and doesn’t exist. Is that true? Because that sounds like crazy talk to me! This means that nothing new can be brought to the table? While I tend to align myself more closely with the “it’s all been done before” camp, I also think that a statement like this only works in Trash Humpers’ favor. The mere fact that Harmony has chosen to apply a “found VHS tape” style to a 70-something minute “movie,” transferred to it to a 35mm print and exhibited it in a venue that has never shown anything like this, is cause for celebration.
That said, let me try to provide some examples to help you out (and for those who have seen the film and are smarter than I am, feel free to chime in because I’m just spitting this stuff out):
1) I know for a fact that there was much more footage shot that would have pushed the content wayyy too far over-the-top. I know that we see some dead bodies in the finished cut, but we never see any actual murdering/torturing/etc. That’s a very important decision, a calculated one, that Harmony made when he was sitting down with his footage to edit it. I want to respect him and not divulge more information on what some of these episodes were, but I know there was MUCH more footage there, and I know that he used his brain noodles to decide what was and wasn’t too much. This is in keeping with that “found VHS tape” idea, choosing less over more. (Though I’m sure many would say the finished product is nothing but ‘more’.) An example of this, which Harmony himself pointed out to me, was with the little baby. There’s a shot when Grandma Trash Humper is holding the baby, and then we cut to a shower head that is spraying scalding hot water. In that moment, an almost sickening sense of danger is implied through this juxtaposition. Of course, this shot also tells us that Mommy is in the shower, but on a deeper level, it adds to the sense of impending danger. So, yes, thoughtful decisions were made every step of the way; the layers that people like Dennis Lim so eloquently unravel are, indeed, there for the taking if one so chooses.
2) When shooting a film with a more organic style, the L’Avventura-esque idea of “carefully calculated” and “expertly composed” shots doesn’t apply. But I submit Mister Lonely as evidence that Harmony Korine has an eye for ‘cinematic’ choreography and cinematography. With that film, he proves that he understands this notion quite well (too many shots to name, though I can if you want me to—dollies, Steadicams, etc.). For Trash Humpers, those rules don’t apply, so by NOT employing them he has proven his understanding of the format in which he’s working. He made a decision early on that each scene would unfold in one take. This isn’t laziness, it’s being true to how home movies work. It’s that (right? wrong?) idea of the abstract painter needing to show he can paint real life before exploding it into thousands of pieces. Whatever you think of Mister Lonely, there is some gorgeously lush cinematography to behold (even something like the slow zoom in on Denis Lavant/Charlie Chaplin as he practices his English and unleashes an increasingly furious stream-of-consciousness – at first this is funny, but by the end, we have learned an enormous amount about this person’s troubled inner state).
3) Along those lines, I find the in-and-out points that he selected for many of these scenes to feel utterly organic. This film wasn’t edited in camera and output to 35mm. There was careful studying of the footage and decision-making that led to the feeling of stopping and starting. One specific shot that springs to mind as far as being the perfect length is an early one with a small, fat, suit-wearing child playing basketball. He misses, and the Trash Humpers laugh. He misses again and they laugh again. There is a repetition and a rhythm to this scene that shows Korine’s impeccable comic timing. It’s held JUST the right length. One more miss-and-laugh and it would have been too much. A smaller example: I forget when (it’s been a week and many movies since I’ve seen it), but we start mid-song on Grandma Trash Humper. This too, feels like the PERFECT place to begin, although it feels like it was just randomly started at that moment with no rhyme or reason.
You’re right about this being a comments section, so I’m going to curb it there. I think your statements – in the comments and in the review itself – have established where you stand with regards to this form of art-making. To be honest, I sometimes look at a Jackson Pollock and think, “Say huh?” But I also KNOW that for me to think I could throw some paint on a canvas and produce something similar is delusional. There’s only one reason that your version of Trash Humpers would fail, and it’s a big one, rendering any smaller decisions obsolete: you have no deeper, instinctual, emotional connection to the idea at hand. You wouldn’t be able to trust your gut on each and every decision that is made, from the masks to the outfits to the supporting performers to the camera movement to the haunting lullaby to knowing what was the film’s appropriate last shot because you wouldn’t even know where to begin. Mark my words: if you did this in a weekend, your Trash Humpers would look like bad mumblecore. But I still really want to see it!
Tully, I think in a nutshell D’Angelo is saying with his falsifiability example that Trash Humpers is built conceptually so that there can be no such thing as a failed Trash Humpers or a successful Trash Humpers, just as their can’t be a good version of Warhol’s Sleep or Empire.
Okay, now I get it! Thank you, Ian. You’re right, Mike, for me to simply say, “It just FEELS right,” doesn’t work here. I would actually need to use my brain more than I’m ready to right now, in order to approach this angle, but let me give some similar examples at least:
1) The Blair Witch Project (While I actually like this movie, I was often pulled out of it by the performance of the lead actress. This inherently reminded me that I was watching a ‘movie.’) 2) The Poughkeepsie Tapes (This has some really freaky material but the fact that the filmmakers surrounded it with talking head interviews that “looked back on the crime” prevented it from being all-the-way immediate and in moment.) 3) Man Bites Dog (I haven’t seen this in years but at the time I remember being very convinced by it. So, according to the falsifiability premise, this isn’t a great example, but I’m using it as a positive comparison to Trash Humpers.)
Okay, that’s all on this one, hopefully for good. While I very much understand where you’re coming from, all I can say is that after the one-two punch of Mister Lonely and Trash Humpers, I think Harmony Korine has proven himself to be a true artist who follows his instincts to produce pure acts of creative expression.
Tully: while I wouldn’t exactly say I enjoyed Trash Humpers, I have enjoyed you ; )
The fact that HK has any “fans” at all testifies to the ridiculuous, bourgeoise, and stupid amid the cineaste ranks. Actually, is that really a surprise? The stupid have always been among us: give them credit though; they’re able to con other imbeciles while marketing themselves as “avant garde” to the manistream public. HK belongs in the gutter — quite literally.
Somewhere, off in the distance, from a dismal suburban gutter, the terrifying cackle of a degenerate trash humper responds to your comment.
i wonder if harmony has ever seen any of the “august underground” films. the way he explains his approach to making this film, and the concept is extremely similar. hmmmm…
i am a huge fan of korine’s work. but i must say that it’s highly reminiscent of paul mccarthy’s “Heidi” and other mccarthy work. google him. you will undoubtedly agree. but then again, if you have a penchant or desire for leaving an indelible mark, paul mccarthy is a good chicken from which to take your egg.
Directed by
Harmony Korine
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35mm print
Posted on
18 September 2009
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Ian
18 September 2009
4:16 PM
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