Julien Donkey-Boy (1999)

This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

From my favorite movies..

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

This movie isn't for everyone, and both fans and detractors of the film must accept that. Someone who loves this film isn't automatically "pretentious" and someone who hates it isn't automatically "too stupid" for "art". That being said, I feel as if this film should at least be given a chance by everybody whose interested deeply in the movies. It is in no way a conventional film, it combines all sorts of styles and moods while still miraculously maintaining all of the requirements to be labeled officially as a dogme 95 film. In itself, that is quite the achievement, but Korine's brilliant film goes lightyears beyond accomplishing only that. Most people may believe that there is a fine line between comedy and tragedy, at least in most cases, but I fervently disagree, and films like "Julien Donkey-Boy" could be the best evidence I have for this belief. Harmony Korine does not bore audiences with constant brooding drama, but he does not pander to them by providing constant comedy. Instead, he shakes things up a bit on a scene by scene basis, or sometimes just on a minute to minute basis, or even a second to second basis; there are scene in this film that tackle the very difficult task of being both roaringly funny and deeply sad in a comparable fashion to such gems as "Happiness" or "Lolita". The film focuses on many troubling, disturbing themes, including mental illness, incest, death, abuse (physical and mental), deformity, loneliness, sadness, etc, but it's hardly ever downright depressing. It is tense and shocking, but only rarely can I say it made me feel really bad, and whenever it did that's because it was supposed to, and I realized that n these moments Korine is just doing his job, and he's doing it absolutely wonderfully. "Julien Donkey-Boy" is an intensely evocative and emotional experience filled with memorable characters and moments, bits and pieces of philosophical dialogue, awkward black humor, perverse behavior, terrifying imagery, disorienting editing, avant garde beauty, and plenty more are constantly showcased during the entirety of this entertaining, yet artistically extreme and highly ambitious (to an almost unrealistic level) film. You may love it, you may hate it, you may love some moments, and you may hate others. It can be seen as either a huge, tonally confused mess or a refreshingly original take on the dysfunctional family drama (if that's even what it wants to replicate, implying that such a cryptically bizarre film would really want to replicate anything). It's got moments that made me laugh out loud and others that made me choke on my own tears. There is one scene in which a man swallows a shocking amount of lighted cigarettes, and other scenes include a rapping albino, a man without any arms who drums with his feet, and plenty more. These are real people that see to have been plopped into a fictional world, Harmony Korine lets his imagination run wild despite dogme 95's extreme limitations. He's a fearlessly unique and surreal filmmaker, a man whose films make my mind explode with confusion, happiness, and melancholy. Too bad he had to go on to make sh*t like "Trash Humpers"...

Julian Donkey Boy, created under the Dogma 95 – Vow of Chastity, is in my opinion, one of the worst films I have ever had the displeasure of sitting through. The Vow of Chastity states that the director must refrain from personal taste, and not create a work of art. All shooting must be done on location, with hand held cameras, and no sound can be used unless it is found where the scene is being shot. It also prohibits the use of superficial actions such as murder. All of this is meant to lead to a film which forces the truth out of its characters and settings, even at the expense of aesthetic considerations and good taste.Harmony Korine has certainly managed to create a film with no apparent taste, and even less aesthetic consideration. All this could be acceptable if the end product gave its audience something to take away, other than feelings of disgust. In a film about a dysfunctional family, where Julian is either mentally ill, or mentally deficient, his sister is pregnant with his child, his mother is dead, and his father is abusive, you would expect to be both shocked and moved. The final scene where Julian's sister slips on the ice and miscarries their child should be incredibly emotional, but I found myself completely unmoved as after nearly 90 minutes, I had formed no emotional attachment to any of the characters. For this reason, I didn't find the story disturbing, it failed to have any effect on me at all.Some people have said that this is a tough film to sit through, and on that I would agree. But not because of the subject matter, rather that after sitting through an hour and a half of nauseating film making, we have been given nothing.Personally, I like to watch a film every now and again that is made unconventionally, as I think they are interesting and make great works of art. But this film isn't trying to be a work of art, rather the opposite, so you have to ask what is it really doing? In the end, the only reason so many films are made in such similar ways, is just like why stories are told with such similar devices, because that is what works, and that's what audiences want. This film is trying to drive a car with square wheels, just because everyone else has round ones. It may have had good intentions to begin with, but they have become lost somewhere amongst the flurry of vertiginous shots, and incoherent story line. Whilst a valuable educational resource for film students I wouldn't recommend this film for anyone else

As people see things, things see us. This extremely disturbing film about a man/boy with schizophrenia struggling through life with his twisted and mentally abusive dad, his sister who is pregnant with his baby, and his abused brother, is terrifyingly weird. With a film in which a boy is brutally smashed in the head with a stone and choked to death, a nun masturbates on the floor, and a armless man plays the drums, it is completely obvious that this film will only appeal to certain people. This film is freakish, but not in as good a way as GUMMO was. With all this being said, while the film was a hellish and emotional picture that is not for the mainstream(to say the least), I would never ever want to really see it again. This was just too much. It made me feel unclean in a way much deeper tan GUMMO. I felt my mind was permanently warped. I never want to even think about this film ever again. Thinking about it makes me feel nauseous. The images and the characters and the actions of them have gotten to me and Of course, this was probably Harmony Korine's intention. Many viewers won't feel the images they are seeing are necessary to for the to see. It is kind of a freak show in a way. It isn't so much the content that is bad. There are many events in the film that just feel wrong. Take for instance the scene where Julien attempts to sell skating shoes he made. He attempts to sell them to a boy who does not listen to what he has to say about his purportedly useless invention and instead swears and yells at him, telling him in exaggerated form that the shoes will kill people and that he wouldn't pay any money for them. The scene has no purpose other than to seemingly be insulting and depressing to the viewer who has already had their fair share of depressing events throughout the film. And yet it is done in such a way that is very lifelike and very realistic in terms of how the scene is constructed, but it seems so weird to want to film this sort of behavior. It has also been well known that for this film project, Harmony recorded real people's reactions of some of the strange behavior with hidden cameras. This adds genuine realism to the film along with the nasty stuff, as if it didn't have enough. It's a tough film to sit through. I think it's a good film, but I don't recommend it for fear that people will think I'm a sicko for thinking they will like it.

it's sad you guys are so stuck in the dream that all movies must be told in strict refined narratives. the same way films have been told since damn D.W. Griffith. now yes, there are still great films that are told in regular Hollywood fashion, but julien-donkey boy doesn't do that. and in showing just snippets of the life of this messed up family, you get the idea, of how bad things are, and start to partially get inside their heads. the films itself: when werner herzog is getting his haircut. the jump cuts the blurring colored walking scenesthey reflect juliens alternate view on the world. and how messed up his mind actually is.i'm sorry you people can't deal with the fact that juliens mind isn't as normal as yours. but in film terms, i think harmonys take on schizophrenia was much better than oh, Hollywood's of "a beautiful mind"!!! because good god, if you thought that portrayed it better, then apparently you just have no love for creativity.