Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine, 2013)

[knives]

Pain & Gain which is just great if you get to see it. As an aside I have to say I was impressed with the commentary which brings up a lot of compelling points. For instance I adsorbed the race relations in terms of the western with the four girls as John Wayne and company, Guicci and his gang as the indians, and Franco as the white educated Indian who in unable to live in either world. Korine though primarily talks about the relations in terms of Jim Crow and similar restrictions though (in particular he mentions how the opening lecture is on Jim Crow and how that was in his head for the rest of the script). So he goes on how the perceived badness of the native Florida culture is in fact small league to their upper class white mentality.

[domino harvey]

Korine wears his influences well here: Malick and Godard-ian editing (he's even ballsy enough to lift JLG's repeated use of takes), VICE Magazine's celebratory grotesqueries, and a familiar outsiders' aversion to the imagined horrors of the collegiate Greek life. Since it's obvious that Korine is on the outside staring in on a lot of his observations, I thought the film's best moments came early on when he just ramped up the envisioned predilections of house parties and beachfront bro-downs, with elements on loan from Tashlin's never-realized Nine Inch Nails video. If the Oscars had any sense of what's actually going on they'd nominate James Franco for giving one of the year's most bizarre and authentic performances, but I'm aware that he looks all the better because he's the only one given an actual character to play. The characterizations of the protagonists, save Selena Gomez, aren't thin, they're non-existent. And the interchangeability of the girls who stay is the point, I suspect, as coupled with the lack of anything approaching the world we live in (and I qualify this by stating that I've intimately known my share of girls the likes of which this film depicts) Korine makes it clearer and clearer as the film progresses that we're seeing a brightly-colored work of symbolic statement.

And that's fine, even great (too few films try to be Art with a capital A anymore), but I haven't been particularly satisfied with any of the readings thrown out yet here or elsewhere. There's something going on here amidst the retina-burning midnight bowling cinemascape, probably, but it may very well be that the obfuscation is the result of Korine himself throwing everything up on the screen, orchestrating the whole thing on an instinctual level removed from narrative concerns. Can a film say nothing while still saying it so well? This is obviously one of the year's best films, but while watching it took me a bit to accept that. It will take me much longer to accept it's not. This is a fantasy, a fairy tale of today's youth-- one not particularly observant of the current generation (see the brilliant Detention for that), true, but that hardly seems to be relevant to this film or its concerns. Spring Breakers isn't reality, it's hyperbole.

[knives]

To your point on characterization I agree that seems to be the point. Korine in the commentary says (in a very Walter Hill moment) that he saw the girls as a single entity with each containing different qualities of a person (hence Gomez's character being named Faith) and that as each character departs from the film part of the person is removed so it is best to view them not as four characters of four characterizations, but one character with her characterization split between four people. In fact much of what you say are what he brings up in the commentary. He even mentions to your final point how a lot of the images of the film and story developments are ones he's saved up for years and had been saving a portfolio of pictures for the movie (or any applicable movie really) so I don't think he cared at all about saying anything about the modern college culture beyond the broad strokes of what his actual interests let out for that.

[criterion10]

There's something going on here amidst the retina-burning midnight bowling cinemascape, probably, but it may very well be that the obfuscation is the result of Korine himself throwing everything up on the screen, orchestrating the whole thing on an instinctual level removed from narrative concerns. Can a film say nothing while still saying it so well?

Prior to Spring Breakers, Korine, to me at least, was a director who operated based purely on instinct and emotion. His films were about scenes, images, moments, and how the audience was able to emotionally connect with them. I consider Gummo to be an underrated masterpiece, and if one was to ask me if there was any sort of deeper message or commentary within that film, I would argue that there isn't.

That being said, I would actually argue that there is something deeper within Spring Breakers. I listened to Korine's commentary recently, and he mentioned how race was a theme running throughout the film, as made first evident in the college sequence involving a professor talking about Jim Crow laws. I would also say that Korine is making subtle comments at the current generation, as evidenced by little lines like "Pretend Like It's a Videogame".

Then, there are other interesting things, the whole religious aspect of Faith's character, the other girls practically being identical, Alien's character being in perfect juxtaposition with Gucci Mane's character, and so on.

[Luke M]

Pain & Gain which is just great if you get to see it.

Ah, thanks. Missed it in theaters. Will have to redbox it.

[domino harvey]

I listened to Korine's commentary recently, and he mentioned how race was a theme running throughout the film, as made first evident in the college sequence involving a professor talking about Jim Crow laws.

That lecture is prefaced by the professor saying something like "I know you all liked my lecture last week on the 50s and Elvis," which shows the surface level approach these girls are receiving with regards to their immediate social history-- quick pop culture, here much as in the film at-large related via color-coded Powerpoint presentations distributed to each brain-dead member of the auditorium. Equating the violence to "It's just like a video game" is far from social commentary and strikes me more as the starlets lazily co-opting a familiar and popular modern defense strategy but misusing it because they have such a small frame of reference-- what videogame involves taking a sledgehammer to diner plates?

[knives]

I have to agree with Dom here and I think that it is a very surface approach to their world. The whole classroom scene has the sound washed out like it doesn't matter at all. They are so completely unaware of the world outside of their hub that I doubt they're actively thinking on anything. The video game line just shows how vapid they are regurgitating any and everything they've heard elsewhere to appear cool and one with the real culture they have co-opted. Gomez's disgust at Alien's place seems to be just because she is only used to the friendly white version of this world that to get the dull and rusted version freaks her the hell out like the hypocrite she is. So yeah, basically I'm just agreeing with Dom.

Pain & Gain which is just great if you get to see it.

Ah, thanks. Missed it in theaters. Will have to redbox it.

I wrote about it in the films of 2013 thread, but I think it is the closest we'll get to something like a Milius or Paul Morrissey film any time soon.

[criterion10]

In numerous interviews that I've listened to with Korine, he talks about how the film is about "surfaces", how these girls represent the surface of their generation, and I'm pretty sure that's what you guys are saying, Domino and Knives.

That being said, I mentioned the significance of the video game line, most notably because Korine references it in his audio commentary.

Spoiler

There have been many criticisms towards the ending of the film, people saying that it's unrealistic, and so on. Though Korine points out that the ending was never intended to be realistic, that it was intended to be like a video game. I still feel as though he was commenting on the current generation through subtle lines like this one.

[domino harvey]

The film isn't even concerned with surface, though. I think there's a great amount of honesty in shallowness, in taking something on face-value. These girls are incapable of doing even that. They are enamored with an abstract idea of something else, of any given distraction. Surface concerns require observation and awareness. Korine's girls are infantalized, reduced to the unthinking and the, yes, instinctual. The majority of the film is devoted to the cinematic equivalent of shaking a shiny set of keys at its subjects. This isn't really a criticism of the film, merely an observation

[knives]

I again must agree that that works to the film's benefit. These are pretty faces doing what they've been conditioned to think is dangerous and when they encounter real danger they react (minus Gomez) as if it is just an extension of their play of danger. They don't understand that there is a difference between their reality and Alien's. For them it is all just spring break. Faith is the only one who is different in that she recognizes the lines eventually. In that sense they remind me of the upper class in My Man Godfrey in how they treat the poor and the black as a toy.

[Cold Bishop]

To your point on characterization I agree that seems to be the point. Korine in the commentary says (in a very Walter Hill moment) that he saw the girls as a single entity with each containing different qualities of a person (hence Gomez's character being named Faith) and that as each character departs from the film part of the person is removed so it is best to view them not as four characters of four characterizations, but one character with her characterization split between four people.

There's also a structural strategy which has the whiff of parable: each girl's exit of the narrative corresponds to their distance/closeness to the initial robbery.

[knives]

I didn't think of that, but considering the repetitions in the film that's only fitting. It's really the same three or four notes played in different ways and combinations.

[accatone]

What a phantastic film and compared to Drive etc. the only one that is not duplicating the content in the form. I found the playfull (obviously non - narrative) use of characters, plot points and documentary undertones extremly refreshing. Executing these fragments in such an "eyecandy" way is quite cool and makes someone like Noe and Refn look very uninteresting in my eyes. Whereas the latter look like slaves to the form, Korine is certainly not exploiting the content/fragments through eyecandy visuals and rather uses it as a personal playground for various personal experimets and observations. This all does not keep together too well but i love the film for the fact that Korine had the audaciousness to do this!

[Jeff]

A24 is mounting a "Consider This Shit" campaign to get Franco a Supporting Actor nom.

[Luke M]

It's very early yet but I think Franco easily deserves the Oscar.

[flyonthewall2983]

Oh the irony if he wins over Forest Whitaker.

[knives]

I don't think they'd be running for the same award.

[mfunk9786]

This is a stacked year for Best Supporting Actor - even moreso than usual. In Contention lists Franco outside of the top 10, in an alphabetical list of also-rans (in terms of probability of a nomination). But hey, keep reaching for that rainbow!

[jbeall]

I began watching Spring Breakers fully expecting to dislike it, but against my usual judgment, I loved it. Some absolutely surreal scenes...

Spoiler

esp. when Alien was playing the Britney Spears song on his piano while the three remaining girls, all wearing pink ski masks, began to sing along

were absolutely brilliant.

The one thing I can't quite resolve is

Spoiler

the two girls who survive the final shootout. On the one hand, their seemingly unscathed survival reminds me of Michael Douglas' character in The Game, and I think of how disturbing it is that these local characters, who have nowhere else to go but this scene, serve as tourist attractions for these spoiled girls. But the thing is, they don't even have the money to go on spring break in the first place, and they have to rob the Chicken Shack to get the money. So they're not quite your typical tourists. Korine messed with my assumptions about class, and it fits in the larger thread of portraying all of these characters in a far more ambivalent fashion than I expected.

I should probably reflect more before posting, but have a busy week ahead and wanted to register my thoughts on this film before getting wrapped up in other stuff. Again, I was really surprised by how much I liked this film.

[Mathew2468]

Does anyone know if there's a difference between the US Lionsgate BD and the VVS (?) Canadian release?

This:

[Movie-Brat]

Combo pack aside, I don't think there's much of a difference. Hell, it's the same cover art; just in a white background instead of black.

[Mathew2468]

I got it and it looks fine. Not only was the cleavage photoshopped out of the Lionsgate, the gun was photoshopped in it seems.

[ianungstad]

Not a Joke:

Spring Breakers 2 shoots this summer. Plot revolves around the girls getting abducted by a sect of evangelical christians who try and brainwash them into finding god and morality. To be directed by Jonas Auckerland.

[DarkImbecile]

Not a Joke:

Spring Breakers 2 shoots this summer. Plot revolves around the girls getting abducted by a sect of evangelical christians who try and brainwash them into finding god and morality. To be directed by Jonas Auckerland.

Wild Bunch is also looking distribute/finance several other intriguing projects, including:

*Refn's production of Maniac Cop

*An untitled Paul Verhoeven adaptation of a French erotic thriller novel

*Abdellatif Kehiche's follow-up to Blue is the Warmest Colour

*Gaspar Noe's supposedly not bleak (but still sexually explicit and controversial) Love

*Jean-Francois Richet's follow-up to the Mesrine films

[jindianajonz]

Not a Joke:

Spring Breakers 2 shoots this summer. Plot revolves around the girls getting abducted by a sect of evangelical christians who try and brainwash them into finding god and morality. To be directed by Jonas Auckerland.

The script was by Irvine Welsh. And speaking of sequels-nobody-asked-for-but-Welsh-provided-anyway, he's working with Danny Boyle on a Trainspotting sequel

EDIT: Actually, he may not be working on Porno as much as Danny Boyle is using his already published sequel