Monday, October 30, 2023

Circus Maximus

The Film Maudit of the Last Twenty Years Besides Lawrence Kasanoff's Foodfight!

(You can read this New York Times article about Foodfight! here.)

This is something. Travis Scott (who mostly sucks) decided to produce a streaming short-film this year — it's here on YouTube — to promote his new record. Harmony Korine, from my understanding, was brought on to organize the affair, which consists of different fragments of Africa and Italy, specifically at the Circus Maximus, populated at various times by African natives, clubgoers, and Travis. Obviously it's an ego-project on Scott's part — but I find these to almost always have something interesting that shines a beam on the director's psychology. Whether he knew it or not, he created a no-one-said answer to Lucifer Rising.

Circus Maximus is a horror-show of pacing, but this is its maudit structure. Take the sequence (30-minutes+?) of Scott traipsing around the Circus Maximus followed by drones and backdropped by fifty amps as props for his half-songs, there he is searching for something to do... Harmony's piece in the end-credits is titled Pompeii (I'm assuming this involves the limo ride, and maybe material set in the club, and maybe some other suggestions).

This is true This Is Spinal Tap shit. Down the rabbithole. Like the Alan Smithee movie of the Alan Smithee movie. Circus Maximus evokes the sense of desiring a movie to end.

If the film weren't without a beauty and an utter oddity I wouldn't write about it. — If it weren't Korine-related. It's a document of the Travis Scott world id and ego; Harmony read the email-chain.







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Other writing at Cinemasparagus on Harmony Korine:



Circus Maximus [Harmony Korine, et al, 2023]

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