Beach Bummer

Harmony Korine has a chequered movie history. I’ve been there since Kids (which he wrote), and he’s gone on to write/direct some classics like Julien Donkey-Boy and Spring Breakers. However, he’s also made a real clanger with Trash Humpers. His music videos are also all over the shop, his Rihanna video exhibits the same problems as Beach Bum (I'll come onto that below), and the Umshini Wam Die Antwoord collaboration was a missed opportunity.

In contrast, his video for Sonic Youth’s song Sunday is incredible. Yu that's Macaulay Culkin.

The Beach Bum follows on from Spring Breakers

The Beach Bum is basically Spring Breakers part two: Matthew McConaughey (who I still hate from the car crash that was Interstellar), steps up to be Moondog, taking on the big name sleazeball role, which was played by James Franco as a rapper in Spring Breakers; Snoop Dogg comes in for Gucci Mane; some homeless dudes replace the cavorting young Disney babes in the pool; we're still in Florida, but we've moved from St.Petersburg to Miami and the Keys.

There’s an incredible amount of naked female flesh on show here, and I actually have a real problem with this. I think filmmakers can either reflect stereotypical attitudes or change them.

It's fine for artists to explore things, I would never want to censor anything, but there are basic ways to operate which we can either endorse or piss on. Let's not forget that a lot of people are watching Korine’s movies nowadays. I find it mystifying that he comes from the alternative underground scene, and then simply replicates the mainstream patriarchal attitude. I don’t think women’s bodies (or anyone’s body for that matter) need to be objectified in film. I don’t even find it attractive or erotic in any way to see naked women arranged as background furniture. I’m sure Korine doesn’t care about this at all since I’ve seen him in a Q&A once years ago, and I have to say he was a knob, unfortunately. I do think he has the talent to make great films, but I wish he had more of a social conscience.

Moving On

Moving on, what can I say? Apart from the male gaze, The Beach Bum really is a glorious mess of a movie. The best bit for me was the shark scene, and I cannot believe no other review I’ve read so far has even mentioned it. It’s hilarious! Just as ridiculous as the father (Werner Herzog) hosing down his son (Ewen Bremner) in Julien Donkey-Boy, and intoning in his inimicable voice, "Be a man," and "Quit that moody brooding."

If only this all came from good premises.

If Franco was channelling Riff Raff (that muppet from MTV), McConaughey appears to be apeing the Dude from Big Lebowski, complete with the long hair, hippy asides, constant boozing, and the laidback attitude. Jonah Hill pops up doing the most ludicrous Southern accent you’ll ever hear. Actually Hill is also someone who needs to unleash his talent. Maybe he needed to get his sub-Korine skate movie out of his system (featuring a cameo from Harmony), but he's shown with Maniac what he is capable of. The scene with Hill and McConaughey grabbing each other’s johnsons just seems like such a waste of everyone’s time.

As with Spring Breakers, there is a piano scene with a servant bringing Moondog a cheap can of beer on a silver platter, but sadly no Britney Spears cover this time–sometimes my friend, things get so bad they get good again.

Although to be fair the homeless army do know exactly what to do with a grand piano.

Let's get down to nuts and bolts. Despite all these highly amped scenes of fast cars, sunshine, guns, and boobs, Korine and cinematographer Benoît Debie (who also works with Gaspar Noé) still somehow manage to craft out of the chaos a beautiful movie with something to say.

Imagine if they actually started from good premises!

Imagine if Korine was adapting Adam Levin’s awesome novel about a high school insurrection (The Instructions); or mashing up Foucault with Eva Green; or giving a voice to the voiceless. The possibilities to shake the earth are endless with this much money and talent. And yet Korine is stuck putting Andy Milonakis’ wet dreams on film. He didn't make the video below, but he sure could have.

But Still My Heart Beats

Yet still despite all the crap, there is magic here. The method pioneered in Spring Breakers of telling the story through dreamy sequences, flashbacks and scenes shot like music videos is perfected in The Beach Bum. Some sections are breath-taking. You have a blink and you miss a car crash, an amazing scene when Moondog realises what his wife is up to behind his back, and a (non-ironically) touching moment at the end when Moondog explains at the end of the day it’s all about having fun.

And what to make of Moondog’s career as a poet? This works on a few levels. Superficially, it drives the narrative. We could also see it as Korine reflecting on his own real life fame. And it can also be a rather grand meditation on celebrity, covered in sticky mess of of sand, spunk, and gunpowder.

According to Moondog, he needs to go off and have mad adventures in the Keys, getting blind drunk and sleeping around, in order to stimulate his writing organs. We watch him bashing away on an oldschool typewriter in increasingly silly locations. The further the movie progresses, the less it makes sense on the literal level. But just as with Spring Breakers and it's amazing, doomed, fluorescent ending, we are in a hyperreal universe. Popcorn munchers and Baudrillard lovers can both find things to enjoy here.

It’s not about the truth, it’s about the image. And the guns. And the rampage. The surface level is bombastic and exciting, under the surface it’s hard to say exactly what’s going on, but we can at least say something is happening. Korine is pushing enough buttons on the out of control boat to at least launch some pretty fireworks as he crashes into the Statue of Liberty. But maybe there's more to it. It took me a while to work out Spring Breakers was about the American Dream. I’m still pondering what to make of The Beach Bum. Ultimately, this is probably the sort of movie we deserve when a corrupt patriarchal buffoon is the most powerful man in the world.

So in conclusion, this movie is a miss. Will Korine get there in the end, and actually make a really fine movie again? The stakes are high, but I think he will, there's still time. We can look to the career of David Lynch. He basically kept on remaking the same film until he got there with the masterpiece that is Mulholland Drive. So far, the same ideas have been repeatedly explored in Spring Breakers and The Beach Bum, and also the short films Korine has been making (The Fourth Dimension is great), so perhaps the third excursion, again starring some irritatingly smarmy A-list actor, again set in crazy sunny Florida, again featuring a rapper (who to choose? Chuck D gets my vote!) will really blow my socks off.

Here’s hoping we get that instead of Trash Humpers Part Two.