Gummo - The Criterion Collection 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray

Gummo has always been one of those films that has carried a huge legacy with it. The film debuted at the 1997 iteration of the Telluride Film Festival, which resulted in multiple audience members walking out during the opening sequence of one of the characters drowning a cat. The film continued to get festival placement with some minor awards given. That was until Fine Line Features, the specialty films division of New Line Cinema, picked it up and cut the content to achieve an R rating from the MPAA. Unsurprisingly, the film released to mixed-to-negative reviews essentially everywhere, but we truly were not prepared for how much the film would be championed by its ardent supporters for years to come. And to this reviewer, I cannot understate the importance of this visionary work; one that is a miasma of despair cut against raw beauty to create something totally unique and essential.

 Harmony Korine is well known for his filmmaking methods in employing non-actors in main roles. To Korine, he sees that the emotional honesty and lack of comfort in front of the camera reveal an inner truth from his main players. There may be no better example of the execution of that idea than in Gummo, which is essentially a loose narrative concerning the poverty row town of Xenia, Ohio, and the denizens that occupy it. The context of the narrative comes from the fact that a massive tornado came in and wiped out much of the town in 1974, and it still was in shambles when Korine turned his focus toward capturing it. The one narrative constant in the film is Solomon (Jacob Reynolds), a bone-thin poor kid who goes around shooting and killing cats with air rifles and selling the corpses to the butcher for quick cash.  

Describing Gummo to anyone is part of the issue. How can you convince anyone to check out a non-linear work about dispassionate, forgotten-about rural America when much of what’s in the film is designed to repel? Well, the answer is that Korine isn’t the kind of filmmaker who just repels. There are moments of beauty and humanity abound in Gummo, and you need not dig far to find it. Take the scene of two skinhead brothers boxing each other in the kitchen. The camera doesn’t cut away from this duo taking their game about as far as it can go without deeply wounding someone. The beauty is that this is how these two people communicate and express their love for one another. There’s a reason they’re embracing towards the end of the fight, wiping away blood and throwing out half-hearted chuckles to show that the game is over. That’s part of why Korine’s film hits so hard. Beneath the misanthropy is a town and its denizens struggling with identity, for they have been forgotten about in a dust bowl area of Ohio. 

All in all, Gummo is a perfect example of how adept Harmony Korine is at capturing humanism with provocation. He often focuses on the latter to the detriment of the former, but his debut feature is massively entertaining and even more disturbing to watch. The people of Xenia, Ohio barely exist at all on the fringes of society, yet they’re treated with the kind of humility and dignity that morphs the power of provocation. There’s truly nothing like this film.

Vital Disc Stats: The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray
Get that plate of spaghetti ready, because Gummo finally comes home from The Criterion Collection with a two-disc 4K UHD and Blu-ray release that’s housed in their standard clear scanavo packaging. The 4K disc is a UHD100 and houses the main feature, while the standard Blu-ray is a BD50 that houses the feature and supplements. A fold-out booklet is included as well. Both discs boot up to standard menu screens with options to play the film, set up audio and explore bonus features.

Gummo may not immediately jump to your mind when thinking about which films would look terrific in 4K Ultra HD, but I’m happy to report that this new 2160p transfer aided by Dolby Vision HDR is quite the stunner. The original 35mm camera negative was scanned and restored in 4K for this release.

Cinematographer Jean-Yves Escoffier used a few different shooting formats when on this production, including 8mm, 16mm, 35mm and early digital video. The 8mm and digital video sections are still fuzzy but look clearer than ever without any sort of noise reduction. The HEVC encode handles all the mixed formats wonderfully with no encoding anomalies to note. The 16mm and 35mm-captured footage looks incredible, easily conquering the old transfer used on DVD from Warner Archive. Another added benefit to this terrific new restoration is that much of the texture, like the messes of junk piling up in houses everywhere, is finally shown right for the first time ever. Watching it is like contextualizing the footage all over again. Bitrate is consistently between 75-90 mbps and seems to drop whenever there’s a sub-4K shooting source being showcased, which is the right way to do things. For those waiting forever to discover Gummo on home media, I’m happy to report that the wait was more than worth it.

The single 2.0 DTS-HD MA surround track sounds good overall, it just becomes thinner when cutting to audio captured on 8mm or digital video. The needle drops come in clear as day and I didn’t note any encoding anomalies. The source seems to be in great condition and is balanced well between music and dialogue. There’s some nice ambient noise that opens in the surround channels as well. All in all, this is a great audio presentation.

As for the supplements, Criterion has compiled some archival interviews and featurettes in addition to producing a new 12-minute interview with Harmony Korine. The Korine interview is brief but enlightening, in which the filmmaker discusses his influences for the film, including his upbringing and knowledge of rural American towns like the one in the film. Nice to see the filmmaker talk earnestly about his work without dipping into outright provocation. There’s a fun talk between Herzog and Korine that should be required viewing, as it takes place upon the film’s initial release and you can see Korine working to figure out which questions he wants to answer honestly or the opposite. The attached booklet with an essay by Carlos Aguilar and an appreciation by filmmaker Hype Williams provides some needed context on the film’s impact as well.

Blu-ray Disc:

• Harmony Korine on Gummo (HD 11:24)
• Conversation from 1997 between Werner Herzog and Korine (SD 54:42)
• Split Screen: Projections episode from 2000 featuring Korine (SD 28:56)
• Trailer (HD 2:14)

That cantankerous provocateur Harmony Korine has finally made his 4K Ultra HD debut with The Criterion Collection’s 4K Ultra HD release of Gummo. This two-disc set offers a stunning new 2160p presentation sourced from a new 4K restoration as well as a decent collection of supplements that will help expand and contextualize the film’s production and release for you. This release comes Highly Recommended!