{"id":3053,"date":"2013-08-12T00:00:24","date_gmt":"2013-08-12T04:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/smugfilm.com\/?p=3053"},"modified":"2013-08-10T00:20:42","modified_gmt":"2013-08-10T04:20:42","slug":"spring-breakers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/spring-breakers\/","title":{"rendered":"Spring Breakers: Holy Shit, Harmony Korine Made A Good Movie"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"springbreakers\"
\n

\nSpring Breakers<\/a> (2012)
\n<\/b>Written & Directed by Harmony Korine
\n94 min.<\/p>\n

That thing I said, in the title of this review? That\u2019s a thing I never thought I\u2019d say in a million years. I am not a Harmony Korine fan. I don\u2019t like any of his movies. He has always struck me as someone with absolutely no comprehension of what parts of his films are good and what parts are weak, and somewhat proud<\/i> of not knowing, and proud of editing in a slapdash way. For instance, in one of his notorious Letterman appearances<\/a> from the 90\u2019s (which I actually do enjoy watching, they\u2019re awkward and fun and he has some genuinely witty improv moments) he boasts that he doesn\u2019t care about plot, and that when he watches movies all he really remembers are characters and a few scenes, so he wants to create movies that consist entirely of random moments. That sort of thing doesn\u2019t appeal to me whatsoever as a filmgoer or a filmmaker.
\n
\nI have no problem with films being somewhat non-linear or avant garde\u2014hell, I made an experimental documentary last year\u2014but if anything, I think movies like that need to be even more<\/i> meticulously edited than traditional narrative films. I spent about nine months editing Rehearsals<\/a>, figuring out what scenes best led into the next, how long each shot needed to be, etcetera. In essence, I was doing my myriad writing drafts in the editing room, honing and honing until I had a fully polished work. To some untrained eyes of course, Rehearsals may still seem like a bunch of random scenes, but there is<\/i> a through line, and if you gaze even just a little bit beneath the surface, many themes emerge. Furthermore, I can justify every scene, every shot, and every cut in the film\u2014whereas I don\u2019t get the sense that Harmony Korine can justify everything in, say, Gummo<\/a>, or that he even cares. In fact, the trailer for Gummo<\/a>\u00a0(edited not by Korine but by Mark Romanek) is like a glimpse of what could have been, had more care been taken in the editing process of the actual feature. Romanek brought order to the chaos, whereas Korine\u2019s editing (or rather, Korine\u2019s overseeing of Christopher Tellefsen\u2019s editing) just brought chaos.<\/p>\n

Spring Breakers<\/a> is proof positive that, with the right editing (Douglas Crise, you have my attention) a Harmony Korine film can be good, and in fact, fucking great.<\/i> Spring Breakers is a great movie. <\/i>It has a through line, it has subtext, it has symbolism, it has flow, it has everything an unconventional movie should have, and in fact, needs, in order to be fulfilling and not just a fuck you to convention for fuck you\u2019s sake. This is Harmony Korine operating at Terrence Malick level precision. Not recent, lazy Malick\u2014I\u2019m talking Days of Heaven<\/a> and The Thin Red Line<\/a>. And there\u2019s a touch of David Gordon Green in there as well. Again, not recent, lazy\u2014I mean George Washington<\/a> and All The Real Girls<\/a>. In fact, fuck it, Korine surpasses both Malick and Gordon Green here, as far as pure flow. Yeah, I said it. When I think back to those great movies, they\u2019re wonderful and everything, but they lack the pitch-perfect flow of Spring Breakers. It\u2019s a cohesive, poetic masterpiece.<\/p>\n

Spring Breakers flows so fucking well it\u2019s ridiculous<\/i>. It\u2019s alarming<\/i>. I had to stop the shit a few times just to take a quick breather and pinch myself. I honestly can\u2019t remember the last time I\u2019ve been so enveloped by a film, and not just the film itself, but its wisdom<\/i>. Maybe the first time I saw Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring<\/a>. That<\/i> far back. That\u2019s insane.<\/i> And I\u2019m talking about a Harmony Korine film here. What is going on?<\/p>\n

The last time I talked about wisdom on this site, I think it was in my Lena Dunham essay<\/a> where I went on about how much Tiny Furniture<\/a> and Girls<\/a> suck, and how their suckitude is largely due to Dunham\u2019s inability to imbue wisdom in her work as a result of the fact that she has none of her own. She is as lost as her characters, and as such, her naturalism (her depicting of things \u2018as they are\u2019) defaults to nihilism. In her circle of friends and family, she is clearly not the writer, the philosopher, the person with the answers\u2014she\u2019s the annoying parrot that can merely remember the sorts of things people around her say and do and then spit that back out on paper without any comprehension of why<\/i> people say and do the things they do or what they should, ideally, morally<\/i>, say and do, or at least strive<\/i> to say and do. Contrast that with a show like Freaks and Geeks<\/a> (a great show) where Judd Apatow and Paul Feig and the rest of the writers reflect on their formative years with the objectivity and expanded awareness and consciousness that they have now. Night and day.<\/p>\n

Were Korine a younger, less-wise man, Spring Breakers would be shit. But it seems that, at the ripe age of 40, he\u2019s finally come of age. He\u2019s evolved\u2014and seemingly overnight. Trash Humpers<\/a>, his feature film before this, did not foretell this whatsoever, although it is arguably his strongest film other than Spring Breakers; the reason being that it\u2019s supposed to be like some scary VHS tape that you found in an alley or something, and as such, the randomness works. His other films don\u2019t have that found footage caveat though, and so their randomness is simply annoying. But I digress. The point is, there\u2019s nothing similar between Trash Humpers and Spring Breakers (other than that their names sound similar). It\u2019s seriously like he hit his head between that film and this one and suddenly became a better filmmaker. Or like Trash Humpers was this final, magnum opus of random that he needed to get out of his system. Whatever happened, I\u2019m glad<\/i> it happened.<\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t talked much about the actual film, and I don\u2019t want to. Spring Breakers is a trip (get it!?) that you should go on without knowing much ahead of time. I could wax on about the fact that Korine has channelled all the best parts of Andy Sidaris, or about how James Franco\u2019s three-dimensional performance here is his best to date, but who cares? Just watch the thing. It\u2019s the first Harmony Korine film where if you scoff at it, you\u2019re wrong. Whether or not you end up liking it (don\u2019t worry, you\u2019ll like it) this is a film to be respected. It\u2019s quite clearly a very intensely thought out work. Here\u2019s hoping his next film is more of the same, in that regard.<\/p>\n

4 1\/2 out of 5 Codys.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"springbreakers\"
\n

\nSpring Breakers<\/a> (2012)
\n<\/b>Written & Directed by Harmony Korine
\n94 min.<\/p>\n

That thing I said, in the title of this review? That\u2019s a thing I never thought I\u2019d say in a million years. I am not a Harmony Korine fan. I don\u2019t like any of his movies. He has always struck me as someone with absolutely no comprehension of what parts of his films are good and what parts are weak, and somewhat proud<\/i> of not knowing, and proud of editing in a slapdash way. For instance, in one of his notorious Letterman appearances<\/a> from the 90\u2019s (which I actually do enjoy watching, they\u2019re awkward and fun and he has some genuinely witty improv moments) he boasts that he doesn\u2019t care about plot, and that when he watches movies all he really remembers are characters and a few scenes, so he wants to create movies that consist entirely of random moments. That sort of thing doesn\u2019t appeal to me whatsoever as a filmgoer or a filmmaker.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,1],"tags":[2366,2175,2359,32,2365,2363,2360,2367,79,2357,2355,2356,1426,75,2368,2358,53,104,185,2353,2354,1679,2364,2361,2362,78,2369],"class_list":["post-3053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allposts","category-codysreviews","tag-all-the-real-girls","tag-andy-sidaris","tag-christopher-tellefsen","tag-cody-clarke","tag-david-gordon-green","tag-days-of-heaven","tag-douglas-crise","tag-george-washington","tag-girls","tag-gummo","tag-harmony-korine","tag-harmony-korine-letterman","tag-james-franco","tag-lena-dunham","tag-lena-dunham-essay","tag-mark-romanek","tag-rehearsals","tag-smug-film-2","tag-smugfilm","tag-spring-breakers","tag-spring-breakers-review","tag-spring-summer-fall-winter-and-spring","tag-terrence-malick","tag-the-thin-red-line","tag-thin-red-line","tag-tiny-furniture","tag-trash-humpers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3053"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3053\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3059,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3053\/revisions\/3059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}