Gummo: A Review

Gummo: A Review

Pieces of a puzzle slowly fitting together, to reveal a picture. This is an accurate

description of how the film, Gummo by Harmony Korine pans out. Through a series of

quite disturbing yet visually stimulating vignettes, Korine somehow relays a tragic story.

Essentially, the film is a collection of random events that are assimilated into a larger

scheme of things. For the most part, the film emphasizes on showing us things that we

know are very real and actually happen, but are terribly hard for the average person to

confront.

The tone is unveiled from the very beginning, while a dim and dark outlook are

forecast. As it is set in the dilapidated, small town of Xenia, Ohio, the severity of the living

conditions there is visible from start to finish. A few of the senseless, haphazard events

that are captured, consist of - countless, brutal feline slayings, teens euthanizing the

helpless, bed-ridden elderly, and drunken, redneck furniture wrestling. Somehow, in a

twisted pattern, these scenes converge to depict the pure horror of living in this place.

In respect to the cast of this film, Chloe Sevigny is reasonably the only name that

people are likely to recognize. There are a handful of other obscure actors as well as some

non-actors that appear in the film, for various reasons. In the process of being introduced

to each person through certain circumstances, it is difficult to determine which ones are

the actors and which are not. From