Harmony Korine
2009
78 minutes
At long last, Harmony Korine's Trash Humpers. This is about old people humping trash. Well, not actual old people, it's actually younger people wearing masks to look like old people. It's not clear in the world of the film if it is supposed to be actual elderly people humping trash, but that's the presumption. This is a waking nightmare. It is full of adults behaving very absurdly childishly, which seems to be a huge part of Korine's aesthetic. It is trashy and chaotic and difficult to watch. The trash humpers hump trash and do other unpleasant things and chant childish chants in a sort of white trash southern accent. It is grotesque and terrible and part of you hates it and part of you loves it for giving you something to hate. It makes your skin crawl.
The masks remind you of Grandpa Sawyer from Texas Chain Saw Massacre, who was actually played by a man who lived in a tiny town in Indiana not far from your own. He was another younger man playing a much older man in a much better film. He is certainly old enough to be a grandfather himself now, even in some respectable part of the country where that doesn't naturally happen depressingly early.
Old people humping trash reminds you of your first apartment when you lived in Madison. Everyone told you that you had moved to the "bad" part of town. This was mostly because it was a racially diverse neighborhood, which people found very frightening back then. You would be one of the first white people to get on the bus to go to campus and one of the last white people off the bus on the return journey. Your neighbors across the street weren't awful, but they did occasionally get up to shenanigans. The house across the street was populated by a youngish black man and a rather zaftig white blonde woman, along with one of the man's older male relatives. The couple fought a lot, and sometimes the police got called by other neighbors. One night you heard an unusually loud ruckus outside, and when you peeked out your window the police were at the neighbors' house once again. The couple were arguing on the front lawn while the police separated them to get each side's take on what happened, taking statements.
While they were whining to the police about each other, an older street person hobbled her way up to the house carrying an enormous garbage bag that was partially full of cans, for those were the days in which you could take cans to the recycling center and exchange them for a pocket full of change. She slung her torn, leaking bag over her shoulder and started rooting through the recycling bins for more cans to add to her collection, red and blue police lights flashing across her face. While she was doing this, the older man hobbled out of the house with his cane and came over to confront her. He began yelling at her to stop making a mess and when she refused to listen he smacked the garbage bag full of cans out of her hand with his cane. She swore at him and began to pick up the cans and stuff them back in the bag as he continued screaming at her and beating her with his cane. The cops and the couple took a moment to stop their report so they could stand there laughing at this spectacle. The old woman was frail but the old man seemed weak enough not to seriously hurt her even with a walking stick as a force multiplier.
Eventually the violence simmered down and the police left without anyone being arrested, having done their part to keep the peace as far as they were concerned.
Time to choose something different: