After decades of bare bones Standard Def releases, this week sees Harmony Korine’s writing/directorial debut Gummo finally getting the 4K UHD Criterion treatment, The film flips the script from the metropolitan inhabitants of the big city in Kids, to a more rural story focusing on a lower income impoverished community of Xenia, Ohio, still reeling from the effects of a tornado which devastated their small town. Like Korine’s previous film, Gummo is an unfiltered and unflinchingly bleak glimpse of a group of troubled youth who struggle to survive and find meaning in their day to day existence.
This is all laid out in the film’s opening minutes by Bunny Boy, our guide through the world of Gummo via a vignette that plays out atop a busy overpass. Bunny is walking across traffic via a fenced in bridge in the pouring rain, in nothing but pink rabbit ears, shorts and sneakers. Not only does he throw his body against the fence in an attempt to break free of the prison, but he pisses and spits over the edge at the people below as they travel to their destinations. Thanks to his station atop the bridge, he is stuck, powerless, and forced to watch those enroute to where they need to go. This sets the rather surreal metaphorical space as we are introduced to our protagonists of the film in two groups of teens, two boys and two young women.
The boys – Tummler and Solomon spend their days roaming their streets on their cobbled together BMX bikes hunting cats with BB guns, to sell to the butcher shop. They’ve had a rather rough run at life so far when we meet up with them. Solomon’s father was killed in the Tornado, along with Tummler’s mother. The young women however, seem to be a bit better off and happy as they spend the first half of the film behaving as teen girls would. The back half however has them searching for their black cat, Foot Foot, which seems ro symbolizes innocence that is taken from them. It’s after the cat has vanished that the girls are forced out of their happy home searching for her and come across among their tribulations, a lecherous man who lures them for a drive.
The film’s story unravels in an audio visual collage that flips from a traditional narrative film to something more akin to a visual stream of consciousness with audio snippets, video footage and photographs filling in the cracks of the stories that are unfolding. While some may see just a series of shocking vignettes, all trying to outdo one another, the film shows how escapism takes many forms in communities like these. Drugs, abuse, violence are avenues for escape or relief. It’s something that has the characters literally wallowing in their own filth as they slowly suffocate in the world around them. It’s something I think Korine, who spent his youth growing up in Nashville, Tennessee, experienced first hand and drew from much like Kids.
The film is presented in a new 4K UHD transfer supervised by the director that looks pristine compared to my muddy Warner snapper DVD. While there are no extras on the UHD, the Blu-ray however features a 2024 interview with the director that, while brief, has him discussing the film in a way that feels like he’s actually being honest and candid. There’s a conversation from 1997 between Korine and Herzog shortly after the film’s premiere and Split Screen another interview with Korine this time opposite John Pierson from 2000. This conversation is a 30 minute deep dive into the director’s work up until then. Pierson, while flattering the very young Korine, also questions some of the myths that were just starting to take hold around the transgressive youth, such as Fight Harm, a film that was made up of real fights the director provoked and was never released.
Oddly along with the interviews, there is no sight of the rumored two hours of bonus footage. I actually didn’t believe this was real until the director repurposed 40 minutes into an art installation titled “The Diary of Anne Frank Pt. II.” Of special note for me personally was an essay by Hype Williams on the set, which if you lived through the 90s understood his impact on the music video as a medium that at the time was the starting point for the likes of David Fincher among others.
DIRECTOR-APPROVED 4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:
An essay by film critic Carlos Aguilar and an appreciation by filmmaker Hype Williams
- New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Harmony Korine, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
- One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
- New interview with Korine
- Conversation from 1997 between Korine and filmmaker Werner Herzog
- Split Screen: Projections episode from 2000 featuring Korine in conversation with host John Pierson
- Trailer
Fans of Korine, like myself, will pick this up no matter what. It’s a rather impressive upgrade from the film’s last incarnation which was a manufacture on demand DVD-R via the Warner Archive. But along with the added clarity, it’s easy to reappraise the film for its exploration of American poverty from the rural perspective, which has the director turning his lens to another outsider community. The other fascinating bit is he wasn’t that much older than his subjects when he made this film or wrote the previous one, which offers a rare authenticity from the director who is so mired in his own lore. What this disc offers is not just a look at the director’s work with that unparalleled clarity, but a clearer look at the film’s director as well, who is presented in a much more lucid state than some of his later interviews.
