Mister Lonely has gotten under the cinetrix's skin. The symptoms are all there: hunting down songs from the soundtrack, reading the zone-flooding coverage--pro, con, and meta--of Janus-faced Harmony Korine.... The whole enterprise has the pullquote, as it were, from "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" ricocheting around my cranium.
Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword
[Apologies to Mr. Wilde.]
The cinetrix hasn't yet chosen her weapon, but while she dithers she'd like to say a word about these two clips. The first is an edited version of that Q&A I alluded to in my IFFBoston GreenCine coverage. Caveat lector. If you've read even one Korine profile--or all of them--the shtick should sound pretty familiar: curb dancing, house fires, etc.
The second is something I'm surprised hasn't gotten a bit more play in all of the flag-planting press surrounding Korine's "comeback": his 2006 video for Cat Power's "Living Proof." After watching this clip, I still don't know how it is that a nun can fly. But I do have a better idea of a sister's track and field aptitude, as well as some insight into Korine's ongoing auteurist concerns and preoccupations.
Even so, I still can't articulate what it is about Mister Lonely--it's just the beauty of the ride, I guess.
