If I were academically inclined, I might propose a thesis describing the influence of Bertolt Brecht on the work of Harmony Korine. Korine was an indecently young man – seventeen, I think - whose script for KIDS, about a teenager who discovers she has AIDS and wanders through the streets looking for the drug dealing boy who gave it to her, was filmed by celebrated photographer Larry Clark and released to cries of ‘pauvre!’ at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival. The rest is hysteria! Korine and Clark went their separate ways; Clark continuing to forge a career as a latter day ‘shock magnet’ with films such as BULLY who ended up in a legal dispute with his UK distributor, Hamish McAlpine (of Metro Tartan). Korine became a director, continuing his collaboration with lead actress Chloë Sevigny – on screen and off – with the film GUMMO. He then gave a leading role to Ewan Bremner (most recently seen as Stanley Tucci’s comic sidekick in JACK THE GIANT SLAYER – ‘did he spill the beans’) in JULIAN DONKEY BOY. Korine’s work became more fragmented and experimental, culminating in his most recent release TRASH HUMPERS about street people.
Korine’s focus, evident from the titles of his movies, is on people at the bottom of the heap – the ignored, the dispossessed. Commercially, he became an arthouse darling, but he could not get an audience even if he offered them free popcorn and soda. (He could have tried weed, but that would be illegal.)
Until now!
Somehow he has managed to convince Disney Channel teen star Selena Gomez and HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL graduate Vanessa Hudgens to strip to their bikinis with co-stars Ashley Benson and Rachel Korine for SPRING BREAKERS about four girls who turn to armed robbery to fund a trip to Florida where they smoke a crack pipe, hang out with a drug dealer (a dreadlocked and golden toothed James Franco) and smoke a rival dealer and his entourage in the over-the-top finale.
There goes the Nickleodeon People’s Choice award!
But Korine does not fashion a dialogue-driven narrative about these kids, explaining their motivations, delineating each character. He goes for the general. The big statement! The Coca Cola hard sell!
Spring Break!
It is the call of the wild.
Spring Break!
The parties! The waves!
Spring Break!
Shake your ass. Smoke some pot.
Spring Break!
Bear your boobs. Crush some beer.
Spring Break!
As a German would say: ‘und so weiter!’
The tone is hypnotic. The dialogue is spare. It proves, after COMPLIANCE, that a chicken restaurant is one of the worst places to work. You’re vulnerable to masked robbers and crank callers. Darn that career option! When a character does monologue, it’s an answer-phone message played over a slow motion action sequence – ‘I’m sorry, I left without saying goodbye. I really wanted to go. We are having a really good time. The people are amazing. Such good friends!’ Any of the four girls could have said it – any except Faith (Gomez), the devout Christian, who goes home after they are bailed out of jail for being a public order nuisance by Franco’s drug dealer, Alien. (Yes, like Brecht’s alienation – more of BB later.) She didn’t take part in the robbery. She belongs to a church where the leader asks, ‘Are you jacked up on Jesus?’ We don’t learn much about her, only that she too is seduced by the lure of Spring Break but not of outright criminality. She does not take part in the homage to Wild Things – two girls in a hot tub with Franco.
Korine takes the audience down a subversively ‘logical’ path. You want to party right? Well, sooner or later, you are going to be wielding a machine gun and shooting people who, if they don’t deserve it themselves, hang out with people who do.
It’s logical in Ben Drew’s iLL MANORS, where peer pressure in a confined environment, limited options and a desire to be the big man, drives youngsters to do stupid things – do people really deserve to die for what they’ve done? But not here!
This is where German émigré playwright Bertolt Brecht comes in. He’s all about the epic, the whole world view. Mother Courage, pulling her cart – she’s a trash humper too.
Brecht wanted to change the political mind set of the audience. To get them to question the establishment! To get them to act!
He did this through a technique described as ‘alienation’. He wanted you not to identify with the characters but see them in the world that created them, defines them, and finally crushes them.
Mother Courage had sons. She considers that war is good for business. War is business. War keeps her going, pulling her cart. War takes her sons. War destroys her. To have a satisfactory life, you have to remove the conditions for war, tackle capitalism, the destructive nature of business. [I apologise to the monetising nature of my website host.]
The problem with the play, MOTHER COURAGE AND HER CHILDREN is that the audience identified the title character. She was a tragic heroine. They identified with her choices rather than criticised the environment in which those were the only choices available.
Korine is saying two things. Our kids want to let rip. They are immensely powerful. They don’t have to go down expected paths and they can get away with it.
Transplant this to Wall Street, 2011 – the Occupy Movement.
They don’t have to be Spring Breakers. They could be Bank Breakers. They can do it. Put on a mask. Tackle those who have disenfranchised the people. Tackle those who removed the real decisions from democratically-elected institutions.
Who called in the loans? Why do I have to acquire one?
Spring Break!
You get the idea.
Korine’s film is soporific. The chicken robbery scene is done through a single slow-motion take. The sun! The splash! All intentionally under-cranked.
Once again: ‘Spring Break!’
You could emerge from the film feeling quite groggy. You may not enjoy it. Chances are you might not feel like going on Spring Break.
Is Korine’s film meant to be empowering? I think so.
Will the audience pick up on its underlying ‘call of the wild’?
I think Korine hopes so.
Universal Pictures – they won’t know what has hit them. SPRING BREAKERS is the most subversive film to feature a Hollywood logo since BONNIE AND CLYDE. You have to admire Korine’s chutzpah, and it is being advertised like PITCH PERFECT.
