Gummo

Gummo (1997) split audiences on release and still does. It was Harmony Korine's first film as director and he was twenty three. It takes place in an Ohio town that never recovered from a tornado years earlier. There is no plot. Two boys kill stray cats and sell them to a grocer, then spend the money on glue. Other people drift through and the camera follows them for a while. Formally it sits between fiction and documentary. Many of the performers were people Korine found locally. Some critics read it as an honest look at American poverty. Others called it exploitation outright. The second objection is a serious one and it does not go away on repeat viewings. Werner Herzog praised it. Roger Ebert named it the worst film of the year. It is one of the rare films where both positions are defensible. Who should skip it: animal cruelty is shown on screen, and there is child abuse, prostitution and drug use. For most people this is simply not a watchable film and that is a reasonable conclusion. Who it is for: viewers studying nineties American independent cinema who are prepared to be genuinely disturbed.