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Don't Panic Stress TestAuthor Unknown / Don't Panic / March 2008
Harmony Korine's latest offering, Mister Lonely, released on 14 March, is another dark portrayal of the marginalised, who are lost in the tattered fringes of society. We thought we'd give HK the Don't Panic stress test in an attempt to discover why his films are so consistently dark. Anyone who has ever seen a Hamony Korine film will know that his subject matter is often less than chipper. Start as you mean to go on I suppose. Write a film about teenagers with Aids (Kids). For those who have missed his subsequent offerings, it doesn’t get much lighter. To grossly oversimplify everything: Gummo: a bunch of inbreds and dwarves running around a small town in Ohio in bunny ears killing dogs and beating each other with chairs. Ken Park: A Larry Clark film based on a script Korine had written several years earlier about underage kids having sex with each other. julien donkey-boy: a Dogme-esque film following the life of a paranoid schizophrenic with gold teeth who smashes kids' heads open with rocks and runs around wearing bras and panties. And then there is Harmony’s most recent offering. Mister Lonely, starring Samantha Morton and Diego Luno of Y Tu Mamá También fame, is a film about a bunch celebrity impersonators who isolate themselves in a castle-commune in the Scottish Highlands. The film is in many ways a love story and although much more sanguine than many of his previous offerings, I still came out of Mister Lonely feeling irrevocably bleak. It’s a strange feeling to know that you have enjoyed a film despite or perhaps because of the gloomy feelings it triggered in you. Harmony is clearly a creatively distortive force in cinema, both as a writer and a director. Few film makers can mess around with our ideas of narrative so effectively or unnerve viewers so entirely. And yet clearly there is something wrong with the man! When I asked him where his inspiration came for Mister Lonely he said (without hesitation): “I was travelling in Iceland, looking for locations, when I came across a farmhouse. I knocked on the door and a woman wearing no clothes answered. She was holding a muffin and she was crying – make-up dripping into her eyes.She asked me to come in because she wanted to tell me a story. She took me out back to the barn. We were standing there in the mud in our wellies. And I looked over into the stables and there were dozens of dead horses, all with their legs pointing up towards the sky. And then on the plane on the way home I came up with the idea for Mister Lonely.” Ooookay… Fearing for his mental health we went to meet Mr Korine and put him through a rigorous series of inkblot tests and psychological questions. Here are the results: Don’t Panic: Hello Mr Korine. How are we feeling today? Harmony Korine: Fine. Don’t Panic: Any shakes or cold sweats recently? Korine: Yeah, a few days ago my thermostat in my house broke. Don’t Panic: Any sleepless nights? Korine: Yeah, many. In the last few years its been getting better though. I once went for three months with no sleep. Don’t Panic: Do you ever have the feeling that life is utterly pointless? Korine: No! Don’t Panic: Of all the films that you have been involved with, which did you find the most stressful/difficult? Korine: This one [Mister Lonely] by far. Logistically it was just much more ambitious. We were filming in four different countries. It was a massive undertaking. Don’t Panic: What do you do to relax? Korine: Heavy duty jerking sessions. Don’t Panic: Okay that's healthy. Many of the characters in your films find themselves stranded or thrust into particularly bleak or lonely places. Why do you think this is? Korine: I suppose my cinema is the cinema of loneliness. It’s about isolation – being on the outside. The characters that interest me are the marginalised ones that live outside the normal order of things. Don’t Panic: Take a minute to look at the inkblot and gather your reactions to it. Which of these choices most closely captures the emotional impact of the inkblot? Please choose one of the below. 1. Fear, pain and absolute desolation. 2. Utter bleakness and insurmountable loneliness. 3. Futility and utter disappointment 4. Despair and gloom with a tiny, little eeny weeny drop of hope.  Korine: The one with an eeny weeny drop of hope. Don’t Panic: Did you see anything sexual in this inkblot? Korine: No, wait – yes! I can see Tina Turner. Don’t Panic: Hmmm interesting. Okay Harmony – now I’m going to throw some words at you. If you can just respond to me as quickly and intuitively as possible. Don’t Panic: Work Korine: Horseshoe Don’t Panic: Play Korine: Skank Don’t Panic: Loneliness Korine: Tuberculosis Don’t Panic: Kids Korine: Jazzersize Don’t Panic: Depression Korine: Clit rings In conclusion the DP medical team have deduced that Harmony is an emotionally stable individual with a peculiar obsession with Tina Turner. Go and see his film. It will make you sad and you will love it. 
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