julien donkey-boy

Julien works in a school for the blind where he helps the visually handicapped to find their way in the world. But he is also a schizophrenic who lives with his pregnant sister Pearl, his athletic brother Chris, his grandmother and his dominant aggressive father. At the start of the film, Julien sees a little boy playing with a couple of tortoises he has found in the forest. This is followed by a mysterious and unexplained outburst of violence by Julien who attacks the boy and then continues his everyday activities. He tries to comfort his sister and make friends with a young blind skater, but Julien’s inner struggle gradually increases in intensity, until the shocking and bizarre transcendental conclusion. Much can be said about Korine’s second feature, but even more than with his début Gummo, expressing this visual experience is a perilous venture. julien donkey boy, that was able to count on the approval of the Danish Dogma clan, was shot by Anthony Dod Mantle, who had already made a name for himself with his camerawork for Festen. Several scenes in which Julien has contact with ordinary people in public buildings were shot with hidden mini cameras. Korine used a stunning mixture of visual techniques to make a partly improvised experimental and shocking portrait of a fairly weird family in the New Jersey suburbs. With Werner Herzog as the perverse father, and the title role for Ewen Bremner, so far best known from Trainspotting.