The 20th Century’, only show how silly critics can look when they prattle onĪbout their pet artists, and are quickly deflated by even a cursory glance at However, Hughes’ over the topĪssertions that Crumb is some great artist- ‘the Brueghel of the last half of Of brilliance in the man and the film, for Robert Crumb is certainly the comicīook pop cultural equivalent of Howard Stern. To rely on a porno magazine editor as an art critic, and how little the layety Hanson, though, raves about howĬrumb ‘never exaggerates’ in his art, which shows just how effective it is Porno magazine shoot with Juggs and Leg Show magazine editorĭian Hanson, but little of substance is learned. There is the fetishizing of ugly women, and shots of Crumb at a
Pervert who lotuses on a small bed of nails, chews on a long cloth strip, thenĮats it and washes it after its three week journey through his innards, only toĭo it all again. Psychotic brothers, Charles- a drug addict and borderline pedophilic virgin whoĬommitted suicide after the filming ended, and who lived in the New Jerseyįamily home they all grew up in with their mother, and Maxon, an epileptic and His vicious dead father excessive masturbatory scenes of Crumb with his two Not out taking illegal drugs or making some woman miserable ’ reminiscences of Is the requisite trotting out of Crumb’s fucked up Jabba The Hut-like mother,īeatrice, who declares of her reclusive mentally ill son Charles, ‘At least he’s Its only deviance from formula is the deviance of its subject. But that’s what it is- a pre-Internet ideal of the classic Junior High School approach to its subject matter. From the technique of highlighting the bizarre and uninteresting people that inhabit mumbling cartoonist Robert Crumb’s life, to having statically placed talking head experts- such as Femininazi journalist Peggy Orenstein and Deirdre English, a former editor of Mother Jones magazine, who decry Crumb’s alleged misogyny and racism, to egghead elitists like Time magazine art critic Robert Hughes who ridiculously masturbate over the most inane and puerile of Crumb’s work, to ending the film with a text-laden write-up of what happened after the cameras stopped rolling, Crumb seems to be a relic from another age which is ironic since many in the film seem to already- by then, associate him with the bygone psychedelia of the 1960s. In the intervening years, documentaries such as The Kid Stays In The Picture, American Splendor, and Mayor Of The Sunset Strip have used narrative and filmic techniques that make Crumb seem downright quaint and formulaic, by comparison. However, upon rewatching the film, the first thing that stands out about it is how poorly it has held up as a filmic ‘portrait of an artist’. I recently came across a DVD version of Terry Zwigoff’s lauded documentary Crumb, and bought it because I recall how perversely fascinating I found it on a first go-round, when I saw it in the theaters with a pal of mine over a decade ago. The biggest monster in "Crumb" is Crumb himself.DVD Review Of Crumb Copyright © by Dan Schneider, 9/26/07 The almost notoriously withdrawn artist recently revealed in a New Yorker cartoon how he felt about revealing himself in "Crumb." Lying in his bed, with his head on a pillow, Crumb tells the juggernaut of a camera obtrusively poised above him, "I'm nauseous."Īs Crumb surely knows, "nauseous," in proper usage, refers to something sickening or disgusting enough to cause nausea. "I don't feel one way or the other about it," Crumb says. Toward the end of the film, as he and his family prepare to leave their home in Southern California for a new life in the South of France, Zwigoff asks him how he feels, leaving his brothers and mother forever.
When an ex-girlfriend recalls how cruelly he mistreated her 20 years earlier, Crumb aggressively puts his hands on her face, pushing it out of the camera's way. When Charles bares his ruined life, Robert laughs and makes wisecracks. While he is very good at exposing the demons from the id that drive human behavior, he is almost equally adept at escaping his own feelings. But what "Crumb" is best at is showing us how effectively Crumb has protected himself.
0 kommentar(er)
