Mister Lonely

Don't be put off by the man's reputation: the film is about dreams, the illusions our selves weave to tangle with things.

The first admission is that the film is the precursor to Trash and Spring but the vision is not refined yet. Contrary to various misconceptions, Korine is not a nihilist, about nothing, though he flirts with provocation. This has all manner of that, in its main thrust however it is about beauty and meaning as much as any Malick.

The provocation is as in his other works about the ways we consume culture, as biting as Godard in his time and at least here as superficial. The image always reflects your view of the thing pictured, so when you perceive superficial things to rail against it's going to be a superficial perception. Here an example is the segment in the retirement home with senile old people gawking at Michael Jackson, one of them tapping his head with a hammer.

Now about the thing that matters here.

The film is centered on people acting roles - in Trash they were pretending to be old people, in Spring it's even more subtle and deep. Here impersonators of cultural icons; Jackson, Marilyn, Chaplin. Among them, Abe Lincoln, Queen Elizabeth and the Pope so he can have opportunity to provoke later on; a Pope who stinks and so on.

So this is about people who are not content to be who they are, who have to adopt an image that lets them go out and do things, opening up a horizon of life as performance with the complexities of self more evident than just people on the street.

Part of the fun is to see the famous faces in all sorts of hijinks, the faces picked because they're so recognizable; Jackson, Marilyn, Chaplin, each one's demons as famous as their glamorous light. But more, it's an opportunity to conjure our preconceptions ahead of us, show the complexity of that image we know: where we expected the neurotic self, we find people doing things, happily drinking in a pond or playing pingpong, where we expected glamorous light, we find the same troubled souls as the rest of us, feeling small or neglected.

It falters for me in that Korine decided to have this play out in a separate stage, a castle in Scotland, removed from life. It is his way of hitting up against the problem: an inner life of dreams as the desire to be someone else, as an escape to a stage that has no life to gracefully perform for no one (seen as a performance they stage for an audience of three people), so in the end when Jackson sheds the artificial self and returns to the world an ordinary guy, we see that it's this world and your own self that has to be lived. (Korine must have realized that if it is to pose a real question, the stage of dreams has to be seen around us, accessible; ordinary middle America in Trash, the this-worldly illusion of Florida.)

So a mild failure from this view, but with hindsight a necessary one to move beyond it. The gamble is to not be stuck grooming a view.

There's a great image here where we see the man cultivate the intuitive reach. In a separate subplot Herzog packs nuns in a plane to fly over the tropics and drop parcels of food, a nun finds herself airborne; the ecstatic rush of sky, the apprehension of god as the swirl of the whole horizon, everywhere light and air.

Well, I don't really understand why Mister Lonely has such a low rate on IMDb.com... I guess that if you go and see an Harmony Korine film you should expect a bit of noncontinuous plot and a considerable touch of black humour. People were laughing all the time yesterday at the cinema, actually it is pretty funny to see the Pope holding a glass of wine in his hand or simply a: man imitating Micheal Jackson riding a tiny motorcycle dragging a monkey puppet that floats in the air... This film has the finest unreal set I've ever seen in a movie (Check the plot summary too get an idea). Even if doesn't have the complexity of Dogville or American Beaty, it's a perfect representation of the eternal question "Who are we?". Are we what we represent? Are we what we try or wish to be? And finally: Is there a god? To be honest, I think that a film about this kind of stuff deserves a decent rate. Also because it is absolutely well crafted and good-looking. It has got everything Korine is all about: weirdness, uncomfortable situations, disappointment and spirituality. If you are in the mood for a proper "art" movie, check it out.

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.

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.

Harmony Korine returned to the cinematographic circuit after a 8-year long hiatus, no longer a prolific and controversial teenager, now evolved in style, subtlety, film language and self-conscience. Apparently inspired by his own failings in life Korine delves into the wacky world of celebrity impersonators - of people not satisfied with who they are and acquisitioning the personas of others in a search for betterment and happiness. Michael Jackson (Diego Luna of "Y Tu Mamá También" fame) does the moonwalk on the streets of London, dancing and acting his part in front of passerby's while the boom-box stays conspicuously silent. Upon a chance meeting with Marilyn Monroe (Samantha Morton) he decide to join an impersonator community living off the land on a island near the Scottish coast. There amidst Charlie Chaplin, Abraham Lincoln, the Stooges, Madonna and James Dean he finds an idyllic bubble of happiness. The catalyst for the Utopian self-destruction comes in the form of a sheep disease, which forces the motley band to kill and burn their carcasses. With it burning the feeling of safety and detachment from worry.

"Mister Lonely" also features a second thread running parallel and seemingly unconnected with the main storyline. It tells the story of a group of nuns, who believe that through the power of faith they are able to fly. Their pilot - a catholic priest Father Umbrillo is adorably played by Werner Herzog, a adequate comrade in arms for Korine given the strong metaphysical essence of his work. Albeit seemingly disparate, the two interloping stories basically deal with the same issue of striving to become an ideal - through faith fulfilling the will of god or by imitating the semblance of perfection of the impersonated celebrity.

The theme chosen for his career reboot seems like very fortuitous and ripe for the picking by a avantgarde artist such as Corine. Dealing with a relatively abundant production budget Corine pulls no stops to deliver a visually perfect movie, proving beyond a doubt his immaculate taste for picture and music, seamlessly constructing beautiful albeit absurd imagery (Michael Jackson riding a mini bike to the song "Mister Lonely", flying nuns of BMXs or face-covered yoga training). Astounding vivid and mesmeric with a strong premise the overall artistic success is pretty obvious, especially in comparison the the raw predecessors. Albeit not entirely style over substance Corine fails to balance the ideas and images with a passable story. No longer a chaotic collage of relatively unconnected scenes ("Gummo"), structured around the island community "Mister Lonely" feels overly improvisational and uninspiring, as if guided by a belief that populating the movie with oddballs (in true Wes Anderson hollowness) and quirking up the ante will suffice to keep the audience intrigued for two hours. The characters themselves are uninspiring, once the novelty of their wackiness wears off becoming a group of doubly faceless individual (neither truly the personas they attempt to recreate nor fleshed out individuals behind the mask).

The grading for Corine is somewhat generous given my issues with his efforts, much owed to the admiration of topics touched as well as some utterly magnificent scenes. To some extent the flying-nuns storyline offers just compensation for the ramblings on in other sequences. A well toned, beautifully portrayed effort with a grim overtone, featuring an unbelievable entry scene, where Werner Herzog donned as a priest confronts a man over his unfaithfulness. Apparently a true event it transcends the overall value of the movie, however capturing an unmistakable feel of Herzog's documentary endeavours and strictly pointing in which direction Corine seems intent on heading.

The biggest misstep however is a pretty ridiculous reinvention of Paul Thomas Anderson's "Wise Up" sequence... albeit with a different song and sung by a bunch of talking eggs...