Julien Donkey-Boy Harmony Korine\'s Julien

Julien Donkey-Boy

Harmony Korine's Julien Donkey-Boy: A Technical Analysis

Harmony Korine's Julien Donkey-Boy is a famous example of a recent film that has attempted to challenge the hegemony of traditional filmmaking by subverting the rules via technical means. In this paper, I will analyze Julien Donkey-Boy from the perspective of camera work, editing, sound, and lighting, in order to show how Korine's highly innovative use of these filmic means is done in order to both show the limitations of traditional filmmaking, while also exposing hitherto unexplored possibilities of the medium.

The film opens with a televised clip of a figure skater. The footage is shot directly from a television screen, and has been slowed down, allowing us to study the movements made by the skater in slow motion as she moves across the screen. Of course, the image is obscured by the fact that we are watching it on a screen through another screen, essentially adding a layer of static to the image that we would not see were we watching the footage directly. On top of this footage, a recording of "Ave Maria" plays. At first, this juxtaposition seems crude and absurd - a pop culture image with a musical religious epiphany. As the scene drags on, however, it soon becomes apparent what Korine's intention is with this unusual montage. He is sending the viewer a message about the quasi-religious symbolism of the filmic medium itself - a message that he will attempt to sustain throughout the course of the film.

Indeed, it could be argued that the camera in Julien Donkey-Boy is the main character in the film. More than Julien himself, with his wild gesticulations, and the scenes of unbelievable energy and pathos, the viewer's attention is continuously drawn to the not-so-subtle nuances of the camerawork throughout the film. In attempting to keep with the technical considerations of the Dogme 95 movement, Korine shot the entire film on digital video. This gives the film an unpolished, documentary feel. Nearly all of the camerawork is handheld; thus the image on screen is constantly shaking, at times more so than others. Although Korine would later argue that he was more drawn to video for practical reasons more than aesthetic reasons (i.e. It gave him the ability to shoot constantly, whereas with film one must worry about the material limitations of the medium), it is easy to see how the aesthetic limitations of the medium in fact opens up new possibilities for expression. Julien Donkey-Boy is indeed a most unusual film, and it probably would not be the film it is had it been shot in a different manner.

The film was pieced together in the editing room like a jigsaw puzzle. Only instead of forming a coherent picture, the finished work emphasizes disjunction. This was clearly a conscious editing decision on Korine's part, as he wished the fabric of the film to represent the psychic fabric of Julien's reality. As Julien is a schizophrenic man, it only makes sense that the film, in reflecting his perception of the world, does not resemble a polished, narrative-driven work of art. Instead, it is more in line with the Modernist efforts of such filmmakers as Maya Deren and Kenneth Anger - filmmakers who wishes to challenge narrative convention and emphasize the materiality of the filmic medium through their work.

Julien Donkey-Boy is composed mainly of long takes intercepted with quick cuts. In this manner, the film proceeds from scene to scene, none of which are logically connected, as one would expect with the sort of "typical" filmmaking exemplified in Hollywood style productions. What is more, Korine also employs still photography throughout the film, thus making the final version of Julien Donkey-Boy more reminiscent of video art than a mainstream movie.

In an early example of this innovative montage technique, the screen effectively splits itself in half. On one side of the screen, we see a photograph of Julien's father's face. On the right hand side of the screen, we see the moving image of Julien and his father walking down a sidewalk towards the camera. The camera is still - only the actors are moving. As they move closer and closer to us, we hear the father's voice delivering a voice-over monologue - effectively providing a further disjunction away from the two images on screen, as the monologue has apparently nothing to do with either of the images we see. Rather, the monologue is concerned with the Spanish conquest of Peru. The audio recording is low quality - it almost sounds like it was recorded on a cassette tape recorder, and it probably was. This lo-fi aesthetic gives the overall montage a decidedly "home made" feel - one that resonates with the suburban reality that the characters inhabit - and effectively pervert through their actions - throughout the course of the film.

Korine makes frequent use of the "slide show" technique throughout Julien Donkey-Boy. This exploitation of still photography consists of a series of still images, typically covering one series of activities, or perhaps an entire afternoon, over which a soundtrack of dialogue is played. In one such sequence, we see Julien and a friend of his doing a number of mundane things, such as making Xerox copies of some kind of document and bowling. Over this series of still images, we hear the dialogue that Julien and his friend are having, verbatim, in each scene. This sequence, which ends in the bowling alley, gracefully reverts to live action sequencing at this point, and we find Julien and his friends in the bowling alley, completely in synch with the soundtrack, as though they had been filmed "normally" all along. Still, in another sequence, we see a series of photographs of the sister "playing" outside their small house, as though she were a little girl - despite the fact that she is, in fact, a young woman who happens to be pregnant. In the soundtrack, we hear her voice reciting a series of proper names - presumably trying to decide what she will name her baby.

The graininess of the video quality throughout gives the film a hard edge that we are not used to seeing in more polished mainstream cinema. This somehow makes it all the more realistic, despite the fact that some of the scenarios are hard to believe. What is more, Korine eschews artificial lighting throughout, opting instead for natural light. The harshness of the lighting in many of the scenes casts strange shadows on the actors' faces, making them appear more vulnerable, yet also more sinister. At times, the scenes are even overexposed, and we are nearly blinded by the imposition of sun. In one of the more bizarre segments, Julien is seen washing the feet of a young girl in a bathroom that is completely illuminated by a red light, such as one finds in a photographic darkroom; this sinister, almost Satanic affect clashes violently with the innocence of their conversation. Again, such techniques have been consciously employed to emphasize the materiality of the film itself, exposing the limitations of the video medium.