Julien Donkey-Boy

Be a winner, don’t shiver, winners don’t shiver If Harmony Korine were Gen Z, he would have been a god tier TikTok creator. We know this to be true. Instead, we live in the timeline where Werner Herzog plays a psychotic hose-wielding father in this filthy “Dogme 95” film. Who am I to complain? This is Korine at his most earnest. Nowhere to be found are hints of irony or mockery. Yes, there are funny moments — I would describe most of Korine’s films as arthouse comedy. But he is not sneering. Julien Donkey-Boy’s cast of outcast characters are just trying to live their lives. Despite this mess, despite the emptiness, despite the hurt of what life’s winters do to us, they find little moments of joy (well, except maybe Herzog as the Father). Besides earnest, another good adjective is bleak. It’s dire. It's sad. Korine’s early films are bummers, this is no exception. Another word is beautiful. And ugly. The visual style is a striking duality between the two. The unrelenting inventiveness of this film’s cinematography — a trashy 480p aesthetic that may as well have been shot on a Nintendo DS — is worthy of a whole other dissection. The image quality is poor as shit, especially when blown up to a project screen, but the style is amazingly amazingly well done. Korine shows himself as an early visionary of digital film. It’s not perfect and I wasn't a fan of the ending but it’s heartfelt and worthy of a good cry.