Mister Lonely

As a long-time fan of Harmony Korine--his films (sans script for KIDS), his photographs, his music videos, writings, music, and (let's face it) "performance art" known as his inimitable interviews over the years--I, as with so many others a part of the HK cult, have been waiting almost a decade for the return of this erstwhile enfante terrible who amazed the most important modern filmmakers alive along with the rest of us with his stirring explosion onto the independent film and art scene back when we ourselves were all but kids.

I can't say that I was necessarily disappointed with MISTER LONELY, but there are definitely as many aspects about it that I did not like as those that I enjoyed immensely. When I did my best to corral a few friends into the screening, everyone inevitably asked what the critics had said--strangely enough--and all the reviews seemed to say the same thing about the film: "a beautiful and meandering mess." Not only did that sound exactly like the kind of film I wanted to see, but it pretty much nails the film to the letter.

Unquestionably, the film is stunning in visual beauty.

Harmony has a preternatural knack for the visual form; he is in essence a photographer who thinks himself a bit better of a storyteller than he is. His stories are surely fascinating, but certainly being a raconteur of sorts is his least strong talent. His concepts are always fantastic, but his execution can become irritating and frankly gimcrack. Even in his interviews, when he goes on a tirade about talking to Orthodox Jews who are dentists and play basketball, calling him a sinner, you chuckle and can almost see the image in your head of such a scene... then you grow bored and wish he would just answer the damn question about where he got his idea for such-and-such a film, etc.

As most other reviewers on IMDb and in the press have stated, you could see this film for strictly the "nun footage" alone. Those specific ethereal scenes certainly are a true breath of fresh air, and of course Harmony also has a terrific ear for the discovery and use of the best music to go along with his dreamy "surreal realism" style.

The two largest problems for me with this one: 1) The dialogue was at time so sappy and sentimental that it made me wonder how such a contrarian critic such as Mr. K could come up with or employ such hackneyed and cloying material (especially an "epilogue" sequence of sorts involving talking eggs that is probably one of the worst scenes in all of American film history), 2) The acting could have been punched up a bit, especially with Diego Luna who had the physical style of Jackson down pat, but just couldn't pull off the voice, the "hee-hee," or an acting performance that transcended a frightened, timid child of 13 (and, yes, I did catch that this was somewhat the "point," but the whole film's ensemble seemed a bit too pedomorphic this time round... rather like the characters, dialogue, and even narrative of Bret Easton Ellis' last novel in which you almost want to grab the guy and say, "Hey, you're better than this. You're not a kid anymore. And your characters aren't kids anymore. Time to move on and evolve.")

The Chaplin character was also such a wooden villain, so despicable in every way, that I believed his development suffered the same kind of flatness one would see in a late 90's romantic-comedy.

It will be difficult for me to recommend MISTER LONELY to even my most staunch artistic cineaste friends; but, I'm personally glad I saw it, and--again--there was imagery that I will never see anywhere else.

Looking forward to his next piece.

A vast departure from anything Harmony Korine has done, Mister Lonely is certainly a film one has to think about. Like all other Korine films, there is a lot going on. Sometimes we have to accept that certain decisions of his have meaning and certain ones do not, the just exist. This film also simply exists, but we can't watch it without getting curious as to what it is actually trying to say.

The film is about a lot of ordinary people who are celebrity impersonators. The film mainly follows Michael Jackson (Diego Luna) and Marilyn Monroe (Samatha Morton), but there are other ones, such as Charlie Chaplin, James Dean, Little Red Riding Hood, Abraham Lincoln, The Three Stooges, so on and so forth. And they all live together in a desolate mansion and they own sheep, who eventually get infected.

The impersonators live on their own and clearly have aspirations about what they're doing. They don't have much of an audience, although they like to think that they do. Since this is a Harmony Korine film, we can't expect the storyline to carry the film. There are a lot of other elements at play here and the story is merely the background or the canvas for which he uses to paint all over. There is clearly some Malick and Herzog influence at work here and its nice to see dashes of the Harmony Korine we've all come to know.

Unfortunately when the film concludes we're not exactly sure what to take from it, or we felt while we viewed it. While there were certainly some gorgeous shots and some haunting and lasting images, its difficult not to feel that as a film, not everything worked. With a film like Gummo, Korine was able to explore a vast amount of characters and dialog among the backdrop of a fictionalized Xenia, Ohio. Here, we have the celebrity impersonators as well as a priest and a group of nuns in a plane.

What seems to be at play here are a combination of Korine's views of famous American figures, his brief thoughts on religion and fate and who we are as people. As Roger Ebert pointed out, there is this tragic feeling beneath the surface in regards to humans. Are these impersonators going nowhere in life or is this all they can get out of life? Should they learn to love this or shall they die seeking more? These questions are evoked but not completely answered and its nice to think about these things.

Werner Herzog, who actually plays the priest in the film, has the brightest presence and elevates the film whenever he's in it. The actors don't have too much to do, other than stand there and impersonate whoever it is they're impersonating. We can't relate to the characters themselves but merely just the idea of them, and perhaps that makes the viewing experience a little less pleasant. Why is Chaplin acting the way he is towards Marilyn? Why does Buckweat pretend to raise chickens? Do these things have meaning or do they not? What stops this film from being a complete mess are the ideas behind it and the images contained within it. While this can safely be acknowledged as an original and provoking experience, it offers little in entertainment value to the viewer and if anything, complicates our ability to process the film. It is worth watching just for the beautiful moments, such as a nun falling out of the sky and Marilyn Monroe standing in the forest, holding her dress down. But does that shape an entire experience? Not necessarily. There are things to admire here but it's hard to completely admire the picture as a whole.

When Mister Lonely played at the theatre where I worked I thought the premise of a Michael Jackson impersonator meeting a Marilyn Monroe impersonator and she invites him to join her to live among a colony of various celebrity impersonators it sounded like the single dumbest idea for a film I'd ever heard. But then I sat in on a few minutes of it during a break. There is a parallel story in which a group of nuns believe they have the power of flight and can land safely without the aid of a parachute. They believe this to be a gift from god. Both the nuns and the celebrity impersonators believe themselves to be something they are not and is what unites these two stories. But what I saw certainly piqued my interest. Going in with th barest of knowledge about what I was about to watch I became totally absorbed into this strange world.

The cast of mostly unknown actors handle themselves admirably next to the few established actors, especially the enchanting Samantha Morton as "Marilyn". Diago Luna is charming as "Michael" . Within this commune we find Sammy Davis Jr, Charlie Chaplin, Madonna, The Three Stooges, James Dean, The Pope, The Queen, Buckwheat, and a couple others.

If you accept the absurd premise you will find it very sweet or you will find it very annoying. But reality is never far from either the flying nuns or the impersonators and enjoy a precarious position between happiness and the harshness that they are not who the want to be. Michael will face this moment in a scene that literally had me gasp the first time I saw it. This is not some quirky comedy nor is it a thought-provoking comment on the nature of celebrity and its effect on the public. Each viewer will bring their own interpretation. It can be very whimsical at moments and then have deeply emotional ones, especially one involving The Three Stooges and a flock of infected sheep. It is both absurd and heartbreaking at the same time. There are no graphic images of violence to be found in the film and what there is is suggested.

I love this film and if I were to compile a list of my top 100 films I think Mister Lonely would be on the list. It is not a film for everyone but if you are looking for something off the beaten track then I would wholeheartedly recommend this film. Give it a shot and be so quick to dismiss it.

Since no one makes movies like Harmony Korine, I'm not sure what the standard for critique is. So suffice to say it's really beautiful, unsettling, rambling, and actually kind of spiritual. Love his movies or not he is an honest filmmaker with a true sense of the surreal and the poetry that lurks in the strangest details. The casting is brilliant and the structure unique and pure Korine. The premise is the wacky goings on at a retreat for celebrity and historical impersonators tucked away in (where?) the Scottish Highlands. They are rehearsing a "play" of some kind. It makes for some beautiful moments.

This story is told against another story of nuns who want to jump without parachutes from an airplane to prove the possibility of miracles (as legend claims did happen once) Needless to say this has ripe opportunities,especially when you have Werner Herzog playing the pilot. (Korine says the scene with the man waiting for his wife to return to the airport is an actual caught conversation. THIS you have to see to believe). At the screening I attended, an very odd fan's comment to Korine was simply; "Nuns floating dead on a beach. Awesome image man.Dude you rock". Korine says the two stories are really the same thing. Hmmm - I guess so.

Putting the great, great Samantha Morton together with Herzog, Richard Strange, Leos Carax (Pola X), Anita Pallenberg, Diego Luna, and James Fox - matches any casting coup by John Waters. The story may be criticized as forced and ridiculous, but Korine is willing to take bold chances, to mix it up and. with the help of great actors and wonderful cinematography he create of a work of real cinema poetry.

In spite of mixed early reviews of Mister Lonely, the latest film by wunderkind Harmony Korine was not only one of the stand-out films for me at the Melbourne International Film Festival, but one of my favourites of 2007. My experience of his work to date is limited to the writing of Larry Clark's Kids and his directorial debut Gummo. The former I saw relatively recently and impressed me with its gritty realism, while the latter surprised me on its theatrical release with its bleakness.

Mister Lonely is a much more colourful film than anything associated with Korine. Its visuals (such as set design, camera angles and cinematography) are very pleasing, accentuated by its seemingly unrelated parallel narratives and absurdist premise. A Michael Jackson impersonator in France meets a Marilyn Monroe impersonator, who introduces him to a Scottish commune full of various impersonators. While superficially the film appears to be frivolous, clearly it has deeper social comments to make about identity, loneliness and alienation, issues the director has been reportedly grappling with personally.

The other narrative relates to a group of missionaries in Panama, with Werner Herzog portraying a priest, Father Umbrillo, delivering food aid by plane, assisted by various nuns. While the connection between the dual narratives is unclear, this story is strangely surreal, visually alluring and entertaining.

There is a small flat spot towards the end of the film, but for most of the film's 112 minutes, I had a big smile that was hard to wipe off my face. Charlie Chaplin, Shirley Temple, James Dean, Little Red Riding Hood, Queen Elizabeth, the Pope, The Three Stooges, Abraham Lincoln, Madonna and Buckwheat are all there.

The humour and irony are used with a clever and skillful blend of under- and over-statement. There is an underlying subtle sadness to some of the characters who, in spite of their eccentric alter egos, remain ordinary people that an audience can relate to. The film is intelligent and emotionally honest. One part is particularly close to the bone for me and brought tears to my eyes. This is Korine's most accessible and enjoyable film. It is full of originality and I highly recommend it.