Spunky donkey a Little Too Funky

Whether you loved it or hated it, 1995's most infamous film--Kids, a day in the life of sex-crazed, drugged-up New York skaters--signaled the debut of an interesting, if not innovative, new talent. In his shockingly realistic screenplay, Harmony Korine, a Californian Jew who left home at the age of 16, captured the verbal rhythms and psychological nihilism of adolescents living at the fringe. In his 1997 directorial debut, Gummo, Korine attempted to "push humor to extreme limits" by provoking random passers-by into fistfights and then filming the results with hand-held cameras. The filmmaker's latest audacious feature, the uniquely bizarre julien donkey-boy, strips cinema to even barer levels. Starring Ewan Bremner ("Spud" from Trainspotting) and Chlo Sevigny ("Jennie" from Kids), the film provides a keyhole view into the life of a schizophrenic and his disturbingly dysfunctional family. Using no formal script and few special effects, donkey-boy is at once an avant-garde "art house" film that nobody will see and a strikingly original work that merits critical attention.

Julien (Bremner) is a schizophrenic who works at a school for the blind. He lives at home with his pregnant sister (Sevigny), tyrannical father (played by renowned filmmaker Werner Herzog), athletic brother Chris (Evan Neumann) and unnamed grandmother (played by Korine's own grandmother, Jorce). In terms of structure, that's about all there is, for donkey-boy is not a traditional narrative. Certainly, there's a sequence of events (albeit bizarre ones)--Julien kills a boy in the park, Julien befriends a blind ice-skater, Julien goes to church, etc.--but no particular story is told. Instead, the viewer is presented with a motley assemblage of images and fragments from Julien's daily life--some of them humorous, some of them tragic, all of them enigmatic. In the film, Korine wanted "to push the idea of reality and truth in film to the limit," even if this means redefining our notion of cinematic storytelling. From black albinos to Thalidomide victims to singers in a gospel church, these unusual and memorable images take the place of well-developed themes or plots in Korine's artistic universe, reflecting the psychological and visual chaos of our own unpredictable realities.

The film, however, is not always successful in engaging its audience. When a character exclaims "I can't take it any more!" towards the middle of the film, several critics at the press screening hollered "Neither can we!" and promptly left the theater. Others, however, sat rapt with attention throughout the closing credits. The wildly mixed response to the film is likely because of its unconventionality. As the first American "Dogme 95" film, a Norwegian cinematic movement that calls for the "stripping down of film," donkey-boy was shot using hand-held cameras and without written dialogue or special lighting and sound. Throw in some low-tech visual effects (superimposing, slow motion, etc.), and the result is a visual spectacle unlike anything in the American film tradition. Rumor has it that Steven Spielberg is planning his own "Dogme" film, and, though doubtlessly it will conform to most of his predictable conventions, it does suggest the potential for a more down-to-earth popular cinema.

Bizarre, unpredictable, grotesque and yet strangely poignant, julien donkey-boy is above all unforgettable. If you're tired of the standard Hollywood fare, check out this daring experiment in cinematic syntax.