Gummo

"Life is beautiful. Really it is. Full of beauty and illusions. Life is great. Without it, you'd be dead." I didn't even know where to start after watching it. The first thing I felt was just this weird urge to take a shower like i needed to wash off everything I just sat through. It wasn't just uncomfortable—it felt, idk the right way to describe it, dirty and contaminating i guess. It's like after watching it, it'll leave a residue on you and you carry it even after it's over. The whole thing felt almost post-apocalyptic. A small town already ruined where people just continue living because there's nothing else to do and people just exist in the aftermath of something that already destroyed them—by the tornado or by life itself. It also felt like a raw, unfiltered glimpse into rural and low-income Midwestern life. The poverty, the neglect, the violence, the social issues are all pretty spot on. You can see how issues like alcoholism, exploitation, domestic abuse, sexual violence even animal cruelty and boredom shape the environment, and how people try to cope with that emptiness. The way they find purpose or even small bits of happiness isn't ideal even if it's destructive or meaningless. The lack of structure of the movie adds to that feeling. It feels like fragments of memory and random glimpses into different lives that don't neatly connect. Life in that environment isn't linear or purposeful either. It's repetitive and stagnant. Visually, it's like flipping through someone's old and forgotten album which is oddly intimate. And because of that, it feels more real but also more invasive. Like you're seeing something you weren't meant to see. I also keep thinking about how desensitized everything feels. Violence, neglect and cruelty dont register as shocking to them. They exist as part of everyday life. That acceptance makes it heavier to sit through. In the end, I regret putting it off for so long. I remember the bathtub scene circulating on tiktok along with comments calling it weird or bad movie has no plot. But now it feels like their reaction misses the point. If you don't get it, you don't get it and honestly, good for you. Because this isn't an easy watch and it's not meant to be.