imdave8-2 As a fan of Korine's work that I have viewed so far (Gummo, Spring Breakers), I have been looking forward to viewing JDB for quite some time now. Finding a copy of the film was the toughest part, but I eventually did come across one, and the viewing certainly did live up to expectation. Julien Donkey-Boy is Harmony Korine's second feature film, and follows the lives of a dysfunctional family. The father (Werner Herzog) is mean, brutish, tough, and creepy. He is hard on his children; a pregnant girl (Chloe Sevigny), a wannabe wrestler son (Evan Neumann) and a schizophrenic son, Julien. The film essentially has no real plot. Instead, we follow this family around for a few weeks or so. Time feels irrelevant. We see the family get up to many things. The father is constantly pushing his wrestling son to be tough, and doesn't appear to have a care for Julien, who clearly needs love and kindness around him. Various events happen. As I said, it is hardly plot driven. More so just an insight into their vastly interesting and obscure lives. What connected with me the most with this film was the realism. JDB is easily one of the most real, honest, most human films I have ever seen, and I would also say that for Korine's other films. What Korine does so incredibly well in his work is creating a world. The film genuinely feels like a documentary. With the combination of the filming style, to the characters, to the events, to the performances - this film genuinely feels like real life. Quite an obscure and uncomfortable atmosphere is felt, and it comes very naturally. The film feels as though Korine has got his old video camera out and filmed this random family for days. We maybe don't know people like this personally, but we know there are people exactly like this out there in the world. We are taken on a journey by the filmmaker and delve into these peoples lifestyle for a period of time, and it is utterly fascinating. The approach to the film is in no way insulting or degrading these people, it is an honest and fair depiction of their lifestyle. That is something that I cannot praise Korine enough for. He looks at these people with such care and emotion and honesty, that we connect with them as human beings. We do not look down upon them, with walk along side them and become part of their lifestyle for the duration of the film. As we watch disabled people enjoy themselves, we get a feeling of real happiness within us. A real humanity. This film oozes with realness. It's hard to believe it's fiction.As I mentioned, this is helped massively by two things: the visuals and the acting. The visual style of this film is what will divide viewers. With extremely rough, grainy, pixelated, blurry visuals, some may watch it and feel as though it is headache inducing. For me, however, this visual style that Korine loves so much simply adds to the films realism. It feels as though this is home footage. As if there is actually someone down there with these people, filming them with an old video camera. Again, as I said, it feels like a documentary. As if I am watching real people, real lives, real events. And there is something emotionally engaging about that. The camera moves so naturally, as if it were handled by someone who was sitting right there with these people. It doesn't feel like a film, the camera doesn't flow smoothly like a Kubrick film. It isn't mapped out like a PTA long take. It just moves and observes, as if by freehand. Once again, adding to the realistic feeling of this film. If anything, the visual style may be a bit too much at times. The performances are out of this world. Herzog, believe it or not, is outstanding and infuriating, as the father. Sevigny is enchanting and likable and caring as the sister. But the absolute stand out (and I might go as far as to say one of the best performances I've ever seen) is Ewen Bremner as Julien. Whilst watching this film I genuinely believed that this actor had all of the disabilities that the character had. His line (actually I think it was improvised) delivery, speech, actions were so believable that I didn't know if it was an act or not. Absolutely astounding. So, I've rambled about this film. I've been rather repetitive, but I don't know what else to say? This film is genuinely one of the realest film experiences I've ever had. The study of these peoples lives is simply fascinating, and I adored this film. It is honest, true, raw, real, heartfelt, sympathetic, heartbreaking. The film delved into these people's lives with such confidence and honesty, and the final product was an incredibly well crafted study of human life. We don't need to follow a complex plot, we just look at these peoples lives, and watch on as they go about their everyday lives. To them it is normality, to us it is obscure, but ultimately fascinating. I don't think I've ever experienced a film quite as down to earth and as real as this one, and I may never again? Honestly? I'm shocked. 9.5/10

Steve Pulaski Let's be brutally honest here for a second; if you choose to check out Julien Donkey-Boy after reading this review, I will consider you a brave and ambitious soul. If you like the film after watching it, I will consider you an admirable one. Harmony Korine's Julien Donkey-Boy is a difficult film to endure for ninety-nine minutes; a complex and crippling one. It twists your emotions, saddens the soul, and repulses every preconceived notion, or lack thereof, you had entering the film in the first place.Korine's first picture in 1997 was called Gummo, and it stands as one of the most lurid, controversial pictures of the nineties decade. The film utilized a non-linear narrative, stringing scenes together with little continuity and providing an unblinking look at a scummy town in Ohio that was ravaged by a tornado and never fully recovered. It was a true cinematic wonder, and still remains that way in 2013. Korine followed Gummo up with Julien Donkey-Boy, a film done in the style of "Dogme 95," a filmmaking movement that focused on the naturalism of dialog, story, and plot-progression by using hand-held cameras, source sound, lighting, and props. It also prohibited that directors be credited from their work, so Harmony Korine isn't even known as the official director of this film.The plot: Julien (Ewen Bremner) is a young, schizophrenic man who lives in his home with his extremely dysfunctional family, consisting of his instigating father (the great German director Werner Herzog), his passive brother Chris (Evan Neumann), and his sister Pearl (Chloë Sevigny), who is carrying Julien's child. We see the world through Julien's eyes, as he rarely leaves the screen for more than a minute. We see the unrelenting madness that unfolds in his home, and sometimes, we become submerged so deeply into Julien's baffling, schizophrenic mind that the film begins to become incoherent and blurry. When I say "blurry," I mean that quite literally, as the film was shot on a DV tape, converted to 16mm (already a sketchy transfer), and finally blown up to 35mm, giving the film an extremely grainy and visually washed-out look.There's something to be said about Ewen Bremner, who is completely terrific here in a beyond difficult role. Bremner was made famous by his role in Trainspotting, and here, he embodies a character unlike anything else currently present in his filmography. This is the kind of role veteran actors fear taking on, and this is the kind of the story veteran directors neuter or make easier to digest for the public. Not Korine; every project he has done thus far has been exercised to almost complete full-force. He's an uncompromising auteur, putting character before plot and impact before publicity to ensure long-term memorability. He's a requirement for cinema.When I say "uncompromising," take for example the scene where Pearl falls on the ice-rink, with lethal consequences to someone close to her. This scene is polarizing and frightening all the more. It left me with a boiling feeling of sadness, and had such an impact on me that it never left my thoughts for the remainder of the day. Take another scene, for example, when we see how Julien's father shamelessly bullies him by soaking him with the hose and demanding that he "don't shiver." Or even the scene where Julien pretends he's God and Adolf Hitler simultaneously.I can compare this to Gummo in the regard of shock, but Julien Donkey-Boy is showing something a tiny bit more distant from reality. To elaborate, Gummo is showing a culture and a town that very well could be real, but it isn't directly based off of any specific part of the world. Yet the problems dealt with in that film since as loss of innocence, vandalism, animal abuse, rape, etc are apparent in our society. Schizophrenia is a mental-disease with effects like those portrayed in the film, and therefore, the reality is more distorted as we are seeing it from the title character's perspective. Both pictures are viscerally gripping for the opposite reason; one shows a toxic reality, while the one merges toxic reality with an even more hypnotic and smothering one.Julien Donkey-Boy is a hard film to get through, and at one-hundred minutes, can be occasionally maddening. We're being bombarded with so much repulsion and depravity that it becomes a bit of an overload. With that said, the overall disjointedness and the grainy aesthetic can be a bit much, too. But all those reasons are the same reason that I liked the film so much. Korine is a force of nature, one who seems to often rebel, test, and manipulate the rules of cinema to fit his own tendencies, regardless of how explicit or inane they may be. I wouldn't have him, or this film, any other way the more I think about it.Starring: Ewen Bremner, Chloë Sevigny, Werner Herzog, and Evan Neumann. Directed by: Harmony Korine.

Simon Dunne Every so often a "new style of cinema" comes along that is totally original and innovative and which can influence a horde of followers and imitators. Julien Donkey-Boy is Harmony Korine's attempt to follow in the footsteps of filmmakers Vinterburg and Von Triers and make a film according to the guidelines they set in their "Dogme '95". However, while this approach served a film like Vinterburg's "Festen" incredibly well by giving a sense of reality to the narrative through improvisation and the use of hand-held camera, in this film the Dogme guidelines are used for very self-indulgent purposes (e.g. the over-use of Herzog's improvisational turns and the dead fetus theft incident at the end of the film, which has no moral purpose or message but is used, IMO, as a means of mimicking the "bad taste" elements of the previous Dogme films "The Idiots" and "Festen"). The narrative is also not very coherent, with many inconsequential and unnecessary scenes (e.g. the therapy-session and the "Foot drummer" scenes). As a result, this film comes off as a cheap imitation of the previous Dogme films; more obsessed with style than the accompanying narrative.To add insult to injury, Julien Donkey-Boy is also one in a long line of films that gives a completely inaccurate portrayal of a person suffering from the psychological disorder schizophrenia (other examples: Me, Myself and Irene, The Cell......). Although this may sound like a nitpicking point for film buffs (since accurate portrayal does not necessarily equate to a great film), the problem with the inaccurate portrayal in this case is that the central character (Julien Donkey-Boy) is reduced to a series of mannerisms performed by Ewen Bremner. The result of this reductionist approach to the central character means that the audience never really gets to grips with the character and can never truly understand what is going on inside his mind; instead we get an actorly mimic of a genuinely schizophrenic person (apparently, this character was modeled on Korine's uncle).To conclude, this film is, IMO, a gross example of style over content with many examples of bad taste and self-indulgence.

Troy H That's part of the bottom line...The other part of the bottom line is that I have enough friends with schizophrenia and schizo-affective disorder to tell you for once and for all, ignore the bigots who aren't open minded enough to embrace this film. Julian's portrayal is right on target, end of story, especially when you take the rest of the sick family show in this film into account. Julian's mysterious behavior reflects my own experience with my own friends and family. Get yourself to the nearest library and look in the DSM-IV Diagnsotic Manual, and look this stuff up. Werner Herzog, as the equally disturbed father, brings something to this film I can't even begin to describe, but I can tell you, I've seen too many people like this for my own comfort.The beginning of the film exploits some of the limitations of the DV equipment it was shot on, making it as harsh, jarring and garish as Julian himself would have felt it. The ending of the film has stayed with me to this day, you still ask yourself about the potential incest months after you've seen it. It's brutally ambiguous, at least for me it was. The rear-guard snobs and bigots I've seen bash this film here and elsewhere are obviously completely ignorant of all the advances made in POV based exposition and storytelling in 20th century literature, which really fries my balls, since they harp on literary devices they obviously know nothing about.Having said that, I would personally bend the Dogma "rules" for the sake of losing all the extra noise and grain that gets magnified in the tape to film transfer. This film was shot largely on a Sony VX1000, BTW, but to respect the Dogme Manifesto, nothing was done to clean up the footage, and I'm not sure if there was much if any color correction done on the answer print for the 35mm pint for theaters, either. More people need to read Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury", then look at something like Lynch's "Eraserhead" a few times. Lead, follow, or get the **** out of the way. People like Korine lead.