ashley webb dane

I’m three episodes in and I’m hooked. It’s shot beautifully. It’s fascinating. The period is such a distant one and not a period most of us are acquainted with (Korea, centuries ago), so the costumes are wild and otherworldly. The gore is very very real. The story is strong. The humor is dark, subtle, and sideways, very Korean. I feel so fortunate to have two seasons to watch, especially during this Corona Virus lock down. The best way to watch this is to turn off dubbing and set the captions to English and the audio language to its original Korean. Dubbing is awful and kills the whole thing- the words and expressions don’t match and it sounds canned.

When I see such a beautiful film get a 25% on rotten tomatoes. It makes me think most viewers don’t have the complexity or depth of emotional intelligence to grasp the nature of this movie. But then those who don’t like it probably think those who do were too emotionally gullible and less demanding of true depth and complexity to see it for what it really is. I loved it. I was prepared not to. It’s a difficult undertaking, to make a movie about that book where it’s less about the action than it is about one boy’s life shattered by an event, the trauma of it wrapped up in the painting he walked out of the bombing where his mother was killed. It anchors him, this painting. It defines how he steps into most every moment for the rest of his life, until he finally liberates the painting, which frees him from that haunting moment, and liberates himself. The lead role is played with quiet intensity. The supporting cast come and go without going too much into who they are- lacking some character development which is actually in keeping with the book. No one has any ability to really reach him and connect, except his Russian boyhood friend, who is a survivor and a misfit and with whom he shares pain and loss- it is what connect them. His other main relationship is with a girl who also shares his pain, which both connects and repels them. She moved away when he was a boy and holds the same secret unrequited spell over him as the painting, since she was there when the bomb went off, also. I wasn’t in love with the movie- it’s just hubris to try to bring that 800 page book to a screen- but I don’t realy think anyone else could’ve done a better job. It was beautifully shot, great soundtrack, the acting was stellar. The real gold of the book happens inside the mind of the main character, which we aren’t exactly privy to in the movie. I am glad they didn’t try to have him narrate at any point to give the viewers some insight- they left the weight of this on the actor, and he delivers. I wish they had explored his relationship to Jeffrey Wright’s character, his benevolent friend and caretaker Hobie. It isn’t clear until the end how much this is about unresolved trauma because he barely seems to mourn, its all him trying to keep a lid on his emotions, trying not to cry, as a boy, and then eventually trying not to feel, as a man. He doesn’t seem to evoke his mother much except in his dreams, although she is ever present. It’s a quiet painful journey happening inside him, and it takes empathy to recognize this is the true meat of this film. I am not sure how I would have felt if I hadn’t read the book, but my boyfriend didn’t read it, and he thought he wouldn’t like it. He said he wished there was more character development, and he doesn’t understand the low ratings for a solid movie. He would have given it an 85%, which I think is about right. It’s a better movie than most of the blockbuster schlock out there.

While I did enjoy it and found it fresh to turn the Superman story upside down, the terrible editing made it laughable. The mom and son begin having a serious and upsetting conversation in their barn- and then suddenly they are in their house. He jumps out of bed with a red cape on and one second later there is no cape. A woman sends a text to her husband and they show the phone close up- it’s the first and only text on there, as if she’d never texted him before. These are only the ones I remember. A movie like this needs to be very tight. It’s a fresh perspective, and a gory one, that is handled clumsily. Also the ending sucked. It just let us know there is more to come, and so no closure at all.

I watched this whole film waiting for it to actually start, and made myself sit through it to the end just because I hoped it would get better. I wanted to like it. Harmony Korine just borrowed heavily from the movie Arthur, but a relentlessly pointless version with no humanity or redemption or depth or class. McCaunaghey even laughs like Dudley Moore, but he is way more Hunter S Thompson about his debauchery (with NONE of HST’s inevitable cool, piercing insight, wicked humor or unvarnished humanity). For the record, I like Korine’s films. They are not for everyone, but I’ve liked the subversive underbelly he exposes to his audience. Usually, though, there is a point to it all. There is a plot of some sort. The main character of Beach Bum, Moondog, has no redeeming qualities. We are constantly reminded of his genius, but we see no evidence of it. His beloved wife meets with an untimely end in his presence (I am giving nothing away here- it’s as meaningless as the rest of what happens) and he barely skips a beat, like nothing ever happened. He says it in the beginning- he needs to ‘go low to get high’ meaning, he wants to hang out with riff raff and ‘has beens’- which means he find himself superior if he can make this distinction of them being different from, and lower than, him. He womanizes throughout, does drugs and drinks constantly, thinks only of himself, looks at people as entertainment, squanders his life away, and has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. And neither does this movie. Except the ever cool Snoop Dogg.