Content Warning: Kuso
July 27, 2017 11:14 AM Subscribe
"My intention was not to make the grossest film of all time, but to show ugly in a time where everyone is trying to be beautiful," says Steven Ellison aka Flying Lotus, the director of Kuso (imdb, wikipedia, trailer) in an interview to Film School Rejects. Talking to The Fader, Ellison describes the movie: "One day I watch it and it’s a slapstick comedy, one day it’s a musical, and others it’s a bizarro horror. It’s kind of all over the place in that sense. I think, if anything, the music fans will be happy. They can always close their eyes and listen to the music."
Kuso premiered in January at Sundance and quickly earned the label 'the grossest movie ever made' from which several people walked out. “I wasn’t surprised,” Ellison says of the walkout to The Guardian, “Stuffy Sundance journalists – they’re not going to like it. At the actual premiere, people were screaming and laughing and clapping.”
Critical reception has ranged from dismissive to laudatory. Jake Nevins at The Guardian tells us that "Kuso could scarcely be called a film proper; it’s more like a feature-length sequence of moving pictures and disparate narratives that seem perpetually engaged in a game of one-upmanship, the point being for each image to be grosser than the one that came before. In this, Flying Lotus succeeds with flying colors (and lots of other airborne things, like fecal matter and a slew of bodily fluids)."
Simon Abrams calls the movie "a trippy collection of surreal comedy sketches, feels like a variety show from another planet" and adds that it "definitely reads like a first film: full of promise, but oh so labored, and fussy."
Dominick Suzanne-Meyer finds, at Consequence of Sound, that "It’s hard to disseminate any kind of a thesis from Kuso, but there’s enough on hand to suggest that one exists; if it’s not in the film’s invocations of family dynamics, it might be in the baked exchanges between the couch aliens, who debate whether the shows on their TV are art or garbage. Kuso is both, defiantly so, and it wears its abrasive tendencies with pride and more than a bit of a smirk. It’s a film worthy of engagement; just don’t say that we didn’t warn you."
Pitchfork's Kristen Yoonsoo Kim takes a cautious position, saying, "Kuso is not devoid of all merit, however. Ellison has created a singular and convincing universe—no matter how repulsive it may be. And he brings rhythmicity to his film that only a director well-versed in music could. There are also impressive animation segments that break up the movie, and collage-like asides that resemble nightmarish deep dives into YouTube’s darkest corners. Maybe Kuso becomes coherent on a second or third viewing, but few would (or should) attempt such torture. But will we still keep an eye on whatever fucked-up films Steve still has in store? We’re afraid so."
Kuso premiered in January at Sundance and quickly earned the label 'the grossest movie ever made' from which several people walked out. “I wasn’t surprised,” Ellison says of the walkout to The Guardian, “Stuffy Sundance journalists – they’re not going to like it. At the actual premiere, people were screaming and laughing and clapping.”
Critical reception has ranged from dismissive to laudatory. Jake Nevins at The Guardian tells us that "Kuso could scarcely be called a film proper; it’s more like a feature-length sequence of moving pictures and disparate narratives that seem perpetually engaged in a game of one-upmanship, the point being for each image to be grosser than the one that came before. In this, Flying Lotus succeeds with flying colors (and lots of other airborne things, like fecal matter and a slew of bodily fluids)."
Simon Abrams calls the movie "a trippy collection of surreal comedy sketches, feels like a variety show from another planet" and adds that it "definitely reads like a first film: full of promise, but oh so labored, and fussy."
Dominick Suzanne-Meyer finds, at Consequence of Sound, that "It’s hard to disseminate any kind of a thesis from Kuso, but there’s enough on hand to suggest that one exists; if it’s not in the film’s invocations of family dynamics, it might be in the baked exchanges between the couch aliens, who debate whether the shows on their TV are art or garbage. Kuso is both, defiantly so, and it wears its abrasive tendencies with pride and more than a bit of a smirk. It’s a film worthy of engagement; just don’t say that we didn’t warn you."
Pitchfork's Kristen Yoonsoo Kim takes a cautious position, saying, "Kuso is not devoid of all merit, however. Ellison has created a singular and convincing universe—no matter how repulsive it may be. And he brings rhythmicity to his film that only a director well-versed in music could. There are also impressive animation segments that break up the movie, and collage-like asides that resemble nightmarish deep dives into YouTube’s darkest corners. Maybe Kuso becomes coherent on a second or third viewing, but few would (or should) attempt such torture. But will we still keep an eye on whatever fucked-up films Steve still has in store? We’re afraid so."
This must be some of that "great art" we were told to expect as consolation in the wake of last year's elections.
"A recurring gag follows a deformed boy as he grows a disembodied head within a boulder-sized, mucous-lined orifice by basting the noggin with his own freshly produced feces.".
Honestly, it seems kind of tame compared to the events described in my daily Twitter news feed.
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:40 AM on July 27, 2017 [3 favorites]
"A recurring gag follows a deformed boy as he grows a disembodied head within a boulder-sized, mucous-lined orifice by basting the noggin with his own freshly produced feces.".
Honestly, it seems kind of tame compared to the events described in my daily Twitter news feed.
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:40 AM on July 27, 2017 [3 favorites]
I love his music but my interest in this film is very low. I would rather like to check out his 3D concert setup, but I doubt he'll come to where I am.
posted by chaz at 12:22 PM on July 27, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by chaz at 12:22 PM on July 27, 2017 [1 favorite]
Mostly I just want to know where any of these non-Japanese/non-Hawaii-based people learned the word "kuso".
posted by tobascodagama at 12:24 PM on July 27, 2017
posted by tobascodagama at 12:24 PM on July 27, 2017
Two things I notice from the summaries which interest me:
1. Doesn't sound like there's much gory death. Gross-out stuff doesn't bother me too much although I don't enjoy it; violence and pain that often accompany gross-out narratives really do.
2. Sort of concerned by the "boy oppressed by his mother, eventually defeats her" storyline, because that's a bog-standard misogynist artist dude trope.
Honestly, it sounds...zeitgeisty in an interesting way.
posted by Frowner at 12:29 PM on July 27, 2017 [6 favorites]
1. Doesn't sound like there's much gory death. Gross-out stuff doesn't bother me too much although I don't enjoy it; violence and pain that often accompany gross-out narratives really do.
2. Sort of concerned by the "boy oppressed by his mother, eventually defeats her" storyline, because that's a bog-standard misogynist artist dude trope.
Honestly, it sounds...zeitgeisty in an interesting way.
posted by Frowner at 12:29 PM on July 27, 2017 [6 favorites]
Currently streaming on the horror streaming service Shudder. You can sign up for a free trial. I just made a FanFare post, as I'd been meaning to do so for Strange Club anyway! Spoilerrific discussion might be better there.
posted by naju at 12:31 PM on July 27, 2017
posted by naju at 12:31 PM on July 27, 2017
Mostly I just want to know where any of these non-Japanese/non-Hawaii-based people learned the word "kuso".
I haven't seen the movie yet, but from what I understand Ellison has acknowledged taking heavy inspiration from Japanese "weird" cinema, e.g. the works of Miike and Tsukamoto, as well as the structurally/thematically similar skit-centric cult film Funky Forest
posted by Strange Interlude at 12:36 PM on July 27, 2017 [7 favorites]
I haven't seen the movie yet, but from what I understand Ellison has acknowledged taking heavy inspiration from Japanese "weird" cinema, e.g. the works of Miike and Tsukamoto, as well as the structurally/thematically similar skit-centric cult film Funky Forest
posted by Strange Interlude at 12:36 PM on July 27, 2017 [7 favorites]
Funky Forest is one of my all-time favorite cult films, so that's music to my ears.
posted by naju at 12:52 PM on July 27, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by naju at 12:52 PM on July 27, 2017 [2 favorites]
Just watched a bunch of it on YouTube, where it can be currently be found if you look a little. I know, I know, but I was super-curious.
Yeah, it's gross. But also pretty funny. The concluding boil-fucking scene reads as a pretty sharp parody of pornography. The scene with Dr. George Clinton reminded me of Naked Lunch more than anything.
The whole thing seems completely divorced from realism, so the "grossness" is more cartoonish (think maybe an extreme Ren and Stimpy?) than the kind of stuff that I find truly disturbing, like torture-porn horror movies.
posted by mr_roboto at 1:09 PM on July 27, 2017 [1 favorite]
Yeah, it's gross. But also pretty funny. The concluding boil-fucking scene reads as a pretty sharp parody of pornography. The scene with Dr. George Clinton reminded me of Naked Lunch more than anything.
The whole thing seems completely divorced from realism, so the "grossness" is more cartoonish (think maybe an extreme Ren and Stimpy?) than the kind of stuff that I find truly disturbing, like torture-porn horror movies.
posted by mr_roboto at 1:09 PM on July 27, 2017 [1 favorite]
It's not like Gummo. It's more like if Beavis and Butt-head got really into William S. Burroughs and decided to make a movie, but the only movies they ever saw were Tetsuo: The Iron Man and INLAND EMPIRE.
I think Kuso is fantastic.
Sort of concerned by the "boy oppressed by his mother, eventually defeats her" storyline, because that's a bog-standard misogynist artist dude trope.
I wouldn't take the plot summaries on Wikipedia very seriously. I read them and was kinda like, "Wait...that's what happened??" The film itself is extremely ambiguous in many respects, and the storyline about the schoolboy is much more abstract than the rest of the film (I don't think it has any more than a few words of dialogue, if that). I'm not sure if Flying Lotus wrote that page himself, but I think I'd only take it at face value if so. And maybe not even then.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 2:18 PM on July 27, 2017 [3 favorites]
I think Kuso is fantastic.
Sort of concerned by the "boy oppressed by his mother, eventually defeats her" storyline, because that's a bog-standard misogynist artist dude trope.
I wouldn't take the plot summaries on Wikipedia very seriously. I read them and was kinda like, "Wait...that's what happened??" The film itself is extremely ambiguous in many respects, and the storyline about the schoolboy is much more abstract than the rest of the film (I don't think it has any more than a few words of dialogue, if that). I'm not sure if Flying Lotus wrote that page himself, but I think I'd only take it at face value if so. And maybe not even then.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 2:18 PM on July 27, 2017 [3 favorites]
This descriptions make it look like an engineered "cult" film which doesn't seem promising. Weird for the sake of weird.
posted by SageLeVoid at 2:57 PM on July 27, 2017
posted by SageLeVoid at 2:57 PM on July 27, 2017
I've never totally understood criticisms like that. "I only respond positively to films that are weird but aren't aware of how weird they are. Weird films that know they're weird are just try-hard." There's some element of authenticity-seeking that I find off-putting. It's similar to how people only like so-called 'outsider' musicians if they're actually struggling with mental health issues, not just creatively exploring boundaries.
posted by naju at 3:03 PM on July 27, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by naju at 3:03 PM on July 27, 2017 [4 favorites]
It's a 90-minute film available to stream from a service that costs five dollars a month, so there's no real need to live in suspense and speculate on what it might be like.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 3:05 PM on July 27, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by kittens for breakfast at 3:05 PM on July 27, 2017 [2 favorites]
The wikipedia summaries remind me of early-period Yummy Fur by Chester Brown, who was working out a lot of his relationship to his own body and sexuality through surreal body-horror. I really enjoyed that era of his work.
posted by mwhybark at 3:16 PM on July 27, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by mwhybark at 3:16 PM on July 27, 2017 [2 favorites]
I haven't read Yummy Fur, but there is one plot twist late in the film that made me think the writers had read Charles Burns' Black Hole.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 3:24 PM on July 27, 2017
posted by kittens for breakfast at 3:24 PM on July 27, 2017
"I only respond positively to films that are weird but aren't aware of how weird they are. Weird films that know they're weird are just try-hard."
To be fair, that reasoning is *exactly* why I think Transporter 2 is a pinnacle tour-de-force of lunatic action film, and things like 'Crank', 'Shoot Em Up', etc were tryhard garbage. Transporter2 has absolutely no idea what it's doing, or why the things it shows make no sense in the slightest, or why everyone portrayed is functionally insane. It just shows these things like they are normal machismo action fluff, rather than a violence-filtered take on magical realism and surrealist art - Transporter 2 is to action films what Catsoup is to animated children's features.
Sorry, I start thinking about Transporter 2 and I get really really excited. I'm sure Kuso is a delight as well.
posted by FatherDagon at 5:36 PM on July 27, 2017 [4 favorites]
To be fair, that reasoning is *exactly* why I think Transporter 2 is a pinnacle tour-de-force of lunatic action film, and things like 'Crank', 'Shoot Em Up', etc were tryhard garbage. Transporter2 has absolutely no idea what it's doing, or why the things it shows make no sense in the slightest, or why everyone portrayed is functionally insane. It just shows these things like they are normal machismo action fluff, rather than a violence-filtered take on magical realism and surrealist art - Transporter 2 is to action films what Catsoup is to animated children's features.
Sorry, I start thinking about Transporter 2 and I get really really excited. I'm sure Kuso is a delight as well.
posted by FatherDagon at 5:36 PM on July 27, 2017 [4 favorites]
I'm only 20 minutes in and I officially, 100% love this movie.
Highly rewarding to listen to on good headphones, by the way. The soundtrack / sound design is superb.
posted by naju at 12:53 AM on July 28, 2017
Highly rewarding to listen to on good headphones, by the way. The soundtrack / sound design is superb.
posted by naju at 12:53 AM on July 28, 2017
Well, that was a thing.
Not sure Liache has ended up any happier from residing at a different postcode.
posted by flabdablet at 8:27 AM on July 29, 2017
Not sure Liache has ended up any happier from residing at a different postcode.
posted by flabdablet at 8:27 AM on July 29, 2017
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That alone should be sufficient must-see status and/or trigger warning.
posted by delfin at 11:29 AM on July 27, 2017 [1 favorite]