Trash Humpers

Here's a film where a bunch of old people literally hump trash and lampposts, masturbate plants, throw firecrackers as they recite verse, tapdance in a parking lot and smash TVs. There is no story. There is no cinematic beauty to speak of, it's shot on ugly VHS and the artifact shows. It is, at first and possibly second and third glance, a pointless film designed to grate.

But what do we learn about ourselves if we shy away from the confrontation? Watching this, a self that criticizes comes to the fore for whom all of this has no point, he might not be altogether wrong, but let's surprise ourselves, pipe that self down and, not giving him final say in our view, see what else may pop up. Let's engage our own limits of sense.

What grates here seems to be this: old people do unnatural things, babies are dragged behind bicycles, elsewhere a kid hammers a baby's head or a man dressed as a french maid lies murdered in a pool of blood in a kitchen floor with a hammer next to him. Korine himself partly labors under the concept of a media satire, giving us bare sketches without the framework of story or visually dressed of the same violent inanity we consume elsewhere, not much interesting in itself.

The beauty comes once you start to see through that uptight self that can only settle for these things as part of a story. The men only wear masks of old people, the baby is a doll, we plainly know that the man in the french maid costume is playing dead and that is maple syrup on the floor. Unlike other films where the illusion sweeps us into belief, here we know it is all make believe, know this as we watch.

So why be struck by a sense of desolation?

It seems only because we are anxiously prepared to engage a world where the objects (a man lying murdered) are enlivened by their significance, supplying that horizon is what we're made to do. But here plainly they don't, there is no murder, no baby being savaged and only the form, the context of their significance. A man lies naked in the mud, the image carries a sense of something wrong. The assumption is why would he do that if something wasn't wrong? But how uptight is that? He's just a dude told to lie there.

Having peeled through this, what's left?

'Make it, don't fake it'. A dude lying there, faking it and yet not. The vivid reality of this being a play. The playing itself. Not just an ode to destruction, there's no value to that, but the joy of tapdancing in a parking lot. No mistake, it's one of the great films on the illusion of story and the real life beyond that, but you'll have to be still until that nagging old self exhausts his critique and you become the wandering eye finding unexpected happenings among unremarkable America.

It pays off with more evident value in Spring Breakers. There the partying figures pushing against the limits of sense become desirable young girls, the landscape is similarly inversed from drab middle America to alluring Florida, the humping becomes twerking, but the journey is the same marvelous one: finding in the standard perception of something being empty of value, a deeper one which is the capacity for immersion.

There are plenty of films about a staid beauty, like Baraka. This is for those who want to get dirty living it through.

...but certainly not very good, either.

Believe it or not, there were a few things about this movie that I genuinely liked. I found some of the weird comedy to be hilarious and laughed out loud several times throughout the film. I also thought that Korine did a pretty good job at creating a really dirty and disturbing atmosphere. These elements of both comedy and horror both work to make the movie at least watchable at times, but unfortunately do not save it from being just an overall bad movie.

Perhaps I found it to not be absolutely TERRIBLE only because of how low my expectations were before watching this oddity. I thought it looked like, well, trash-but then I found some highly well done aspects and thought that this movie could possibly be okay, but then it just dragged on and on and on. At just 70 minutes, this is a needlessly long movie that easily could have been half as long and much better.

I would also like to comment on the film's annoying and ugly visual style. It's obvious that it was an experimental, stylistic choice to have the movie shot on crappy looking video, and it does work slightly to the films advantage to make it seem more creepy and trashy, but it just doesn't appeal to me in any way. There's other, more tolerable ways to make your movie look sort of real and dirty.

I would not recommend this movie to most people, but if you're curious enough and a big fan of Harmony Korine's work, I would give it a mild and cautious recommendation.

I saw TRASH HUMPERS at a screening in L.A. where Harmony Korine was there to introduce it and also do a Q&A afterwards.

I was wildly disappointed with the lame array of questions that were thrown at him. Probably 90% were brainless, pointless, and uninteresting.

The question I wanted to ask him was "is Trash Humpers in any way a statement or mockery on TRASH ART in general?".

To me, this is how the movie came across. With a name like Trash Humpers, what else can you expect? It is one of the most pointless and trashiest movies I have ever seen - but that is exactly what I came for, and it effectively delivered that.

It's full of humping, cussing, assorted offensive jokes, violence, vandalism, religion bashing, and anything else you'd expect in a trash art film. The difference is that with most trash art, the point is to try to shock you, scar you, or offend you. Trash Humpers, to me, seems more like it's doing these things in such a way that it's all a big joke - to take all of the other movies that have already done it, and re-enact them while giggling.

After all, I feel that movies really are coming to a point where it is nearly impossible to shock people through exploitative sex, violence, etc. So why not find a nice comfortable place where we can live in that kind of world for an hour and a half and not try to shock anyone? We can just float through it and accept this demoralized joke of a world - that's the world that Trash Humpers creates to me.

Unfortunately, when you start mocking your own genre or personal style of art, along with that comes the instinctive drive to take it to a far enough level where you are pushing people away. I felt that with several obnoxious things repeating throughout the film (such as Harmony's character constantly YELLING in your ear through entire scenes from right behind the camera) - he was showing signs of this kind of behavior. This is something I have observed from my own experiences as part of artistic projects, as well as observing friends mocking their own work. I have watched this kind of behavior occur with a lot of people towards the end of their artistic cycle.

Of course, my interpretation of the movie could be completely off from how Harmony sees it. But, it's nice to have different perspectives isn't it? I enjoyed it - especially the fact that I got to see it in a theater with Harmony in attendance. But, I don't know if I'd ever want to watch it again. We'll always have Gummo for those endless viewings...

Three little devils jumped over a wall...or so one of the characters sings constantly throughout the film, seemingly in lieu of the ability to express her reaction to events taking place around her. The three devils of the movie--or at least the three utter utter FREAKS--travel about randomly smashing stuff up, masturbating, humping stuff, and bumping into other random freaks they meet here and there. It's best if the people they meet entertain them. Smut works best of all. The three freaks giggle and chuckle and sing the three little devils song at any bit of smut or sexual talk or wanton violence that amuses them. The film is peppered with scenes of the depraved trio humping things: trees, walls, fences...trash cans seem to be particularly popular (or should I say, particularly arousing). They take great joy from smashing stuff up, too. So, humping and smashing and giggling at smut (and a bit of murder) is what these FREAKS do best.

So what's it all about? I'd seen Gummo, so I knew Harmony Korine was a director with plenty to say. I haven't read the other reviews here or postings or any comments by the director, so my thoughts here are purely my own response to the film and may well be way off what Korine intended or what others see in it, but, no matter. I think it's about a consumer society that produces trash--obsolescence, consumption, wastefulness, trinkets, toys, the blandishments of consumerism. Human trash, too. Of a sort. Humans that get left behind--by education, wealth, affection, nurture, stability. This film shows three (four, really, plus a few more 'real life' examples) pieces of disenfranchised human trash doing their 'thang' amongst all the rest of the trash, because it doesn't matter what they do, no-one cares about them so why should they care about anything--even if they were intellectually able to. At one point, the female freak says, "I don't mean to do wrong, Lord". This is the closest one of the characters comes to some kind of lucidity, awareness of her condition and the behaviors she takes part in. Otherwise, it's just a litany of "Three little devils", "Make it make it", and "Single girl" (the three most common 'riffs' repeated in the film). These songs are meaningless, too, because, again, it just doesn't matter. It's all just trash trash trash: hump it, kill it, laugh at it, jerk off at it, sleep on it, fall over in it...who cares! As I said, maybe I'm way off the mark with my interpretation. Nonetheless, there is often hilariousness (and a touch of envy?) when these characters disport themselves with utter brainless abandon in the most ridiculous and antisocial ways--I kind of wish I could dance crazily and giggle uninhibitedly as I smashed up a TV in a parking lot for no reason at all.

The film ends with the woman freak having a real live baby in her possession. We've earlier seen what she and her fellow freaks do with a doll and with the 'education' of a young boy, so the thought of her having a real baby has the potential to send shivers down the spine. But...Make It Make It Don't Fake It. "Three little devils jumped over a wall..."

Three vagrants in Halloween masks spend their nights humping rubbish bins and their days befriending likeminded individuals in this quizzical comedy from Harmony Korine. Whereas Korine's latter 'Spring Breakers' is a remarkable film that gradually reveals itself to be anything but what one would expect from its title, promotional posters and opening shots of bikini-clad beachgoers, 'Trash Humpers' is a film that delivers exactly one would expect from the title, posters and opening shots. Any semblance of plot is near non-existent here as the trio simply engage in strange and depraved behaviour for the whole 78 minute duration. Some of their mischief is admittedly memorable, such as making two flatmates eat pancakes covered in dishwashing liquid and teaching a well-dressed boy about various pranks, but the vast majority of the film comes off as extremely repetitive due to the very limited plot. It does not help that the film looks unappealing too, shot and edited on grainy VHS with large bouts of video interference. With their high pitched squealing and cackling laughs, the characters are additionally grating to follow around. It is easy enough to appreciate what Korine is trying to do here, presenting three individuals who manage to find enjoyment and fulfillment in life while defying social conventions. There is also a lot to like in the idea to shoot the film on VHS to give the material a found footage appearance, however, whether all this makes for a film that is entertaining, enlightening or at least engaging is highly debatable.