Mister Lonely (Blu-ray Review)
- Review Date: Oct 10, 2024
- Format: Blu-ray Disc
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Director
Harmony KorineRelease Date(s)
2007 (July 30, 2024)Studio(s)
IFC First Take (IFC Films/Vinegar Syndrome)- Film/Program Grade: C
- Video Grade: A
- Audio Grade: A
- Extras Grade: A
Review
Mister Lonely, directed by Harmony Korine, is an unusual film about celebrity impersonators. With its often bizarre images, awkward transitions, challenging logic, and melange of ideas, it’s not easy to understand. It’s an independent film with an identity crisis, structured like a documentary and appearing spontaneous but scripted and professionally acted.
The film is divided into four sections named for Michael Jackson songs—The Man in the Mirror, Beat It, Thriller, and You Are Not Alone. It begins with an American Michael Jackson impersonator who goes by the name of Michael (Diego Luna, Before Night Falls). Dressed as the entertainer, Michael performs Jackson’s trademark moves on the streets of Paris, a hat near his feet awaiting tips. But the tips seldom come and the gigs he gets are few and uninspiring. In a return engagement at a nursing home, he uses his charm and gentle approach in a largely futile attempt to pep up the uncomprehending audience.
Michael is lonely and depressed. Then he meets Marilyn Monroe (Samantha Morton, Elizabeth: The Golden Age), an attractive young blonde woman in a white dress that looks like Monroe’s iconic costume in The Seven Year Itch. After a brief meeting, Marilyn invites him to a commune in the Scottish highlands to live in a castle with her husband Charlie Chaplin (Denis Lavant, The Lovers on the Bridge), their daughter Shirley Temple (Esme Creed-Miles, Dark River), and an assortment of impersonators that includes Madonna (Melita Morgan, The World According to AJ), Sammy Davis, Jr. (Jason Pennycooke, Rocketman), James Dean (Joseph Morgan, Armistice), the Queen (Anita Pallenberg, Barbarella), Abe Lincoln (Richard Strange, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves), the Pope (James Fox, The Remains of the Day), Buckwheat (Michael Joel-Stuart, Shoot the Messenger), and Little Red Riding Hood (Rachel Simon, Spring Breakers).
In a parallel story, a Central American priest, Father Umbrillo (Werner Herzog, Fitzcarraldo), instructs a group of nuns to test their faith by jumping out of a plane without a parachute. This sequence provides some of the film’s most memorable images as the nuns, in free fall, join hands, pedal bicycles, and perform acrobatics mid-air.
Aside from the celebrity impersonator device that characterizes the main story, Mister Lonely is a muddled collection of sequences patched together with no apparent purpose or unifying theme. It’s notable mostly for odd moments and images—Abraham Lincoln reciting the Gettysburg Address while spinning a basketball on one finger; Buckwheat giving the Pope a bath in an old-fashioned tub in an open field; Sammy Davis, Jr. practicing fire breathing; the Pope proposing a toast that everyone should get drunk; the Queen christening the commune’s new playhouse by breaking a bottle of champagne against it; and Marilyn saying that whenever she looks at husband Charlie, she thinks of Hitler.
Periodically, we see sheep grazing on the grounds. This may be a source of income for the commune, since there’s no other indication of how they can afford to live in and maintain a castle. A discovery that one of the sheep has contracted a disease leads to one of the film’s more disturbing sequences as men with rifles decide the way to stamp out the disease is to kill the entire flock. Fortunately, judicious editing avoids showing the actual slaughter.
A large segment of the picture is devoted to the impersonators’ preparations for a show. They build the new playhouse on the grounds of the estate, and we look forward to what seems to be a climactic point. Instead, director Korine teases us with a montage of the performers parading on stage in costume, mugging and eventually dancing to a lush arrangement of Cheek to Cheek. It’s a weird, sad sequence that emphasizes how little talent these people have and how unrealistic they are to expect a decent-sized audience in such an isolated location. Yet the troupe perseveres.
The film reminded me of Tod Browning’s Freaks. Just as the deformed people in that film find a welcoming community in the circus, the impersonators in Mister Lonely find acceptance in the Scottish commune, where they’re able to live happily and openly. Though one film is geared to horrify and the other is a more like a documentary, the characters in each are society’s outsiders sheltered in a milieu that offers them the freedom to be themselves.
Director Korine was raised on a commune and attended film school at NYU. He came to prominence in 1995 when he wrote the screenplay for Larry Clark’s Kids. He subsequently directed Gummo, which The New York Times called the worst film of the year. In the next eight years, he directed a documentary short, a music video, and a documentary about magician David Blaine. In 2007, he returned to feature filmmaking with Mister Lonely.
Mister Lonely is the strangest film I’ve seen this year. Disjointed, sometimes surreal, occasionally fascinating, it’s more like a cut-and-paste job than a coherent narrative feature. It seemed to me to be a self-indulgent mixed bag of images that use the medium of cinema provoke amazement, perplexity, and shock, without a thematic payoff. It’s not your mainstream film, and many viewers may find it pointless and frustrating.
Mister Lonely was shot by director of photography Marcel Zyskind on Super 16 and Super 35 mm film with Arricam LT and Arriflex 416 cameras with Zeiss Super Speed and Angenieux HR lenses, presented in the aspect ratio is 2.35:1. On the Blu-ray, clarity and contrast are excellent. The color palette is broad, ranging from the bright, vivid costumes worn by the impersonators, the lush green lawns, the clear blue sky as nuns tumble down to earth, and the pure white of Marilyn’s dress. The widescreen image nicely captures the expansive grounds of the castle but there’s a lot of dead space at the edges of the frame when the focus is on one or two characters. The images that bookend the film are shot in slow motion.
The soundtrack is English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio. English SDH subtitles are an available option. Dialogue is clear and distinct. The score is credited to Jason Spaceman and The Sun City Girls, but the most memorable sequence is the impersonators dancing to Irving Berlin’s Cheek to Cheek, a lovely, touching interlude in a patchwork quilt of a film. A solo piano with plinking notes accompanies a few scenes, allowing the images to dominate. A key audio effect is a whipping sound when Luna’s Michael strikes a Jackson pose. The full version of Bobby Vinton’s hit song, Mister Lonely plays over the opening scene.
Bonus materials on the Region A Blu-ray release from Vinegar Syndrome include the following:
- Audio Commentary by Jay Cheel
- New Video Essay by Samm Deighan (17:15)
- Deleted Scenes (36:46)
- Making-Of Featurette (11:58)
- Original Trailer (1:47)
Audio Commentary – Filmmaker and podcaster Jay Cheel notes that Harmony Korine wasn’t sure he would ever make a film again before deciding to make Mister Lonely, which he made out of “the ashes” of his life. He uses the garish pop culture of the day to create something interesting out of images no one else would bother with, and often blurs the line between fiction and nonfiction. The many vignettes in Mister Lonely represent images Korine envisioned but aren’t directly connected to the film as a whole. Moments of reality “bump against” moments that are obviously not real. Korine started but never finished a film called Fight Harm, in which he would provoke people to fight him. He was beaten up while a hidden camera filmed the fight. Korine felt this was the future of comedy but had second thoughts after considering that audiences might not view the footage as funny. Mister Lonely comes off as perhaps too whimsical, but it does touch on both comedy and sadness. The film shows that, ultimately, there’s a real person under the costume.
Video Essay – Samm Deighan points out that Harmony Korine is known for experimental films. His pictures were a shock to Hollywood and mainstream cinema. Among his influences are directors associated with the French New Wave, including Godard, Rohmer, and Truffaut. Brief clips from several French films are shown. These directors reacted to the French studio system and confronted cinematic traditions. Another influence was Rainer Werner Fassbinder, one of the major figures of the New German Cinema movement, who portrayed domestic situations as “hotbeds of misery, desperation and violence.” Korine often explores the boredom and absurdity of everyday life and the extents to which people will go merely to survive them. Werner Herzog, another influence, made a name for himself in the 1970s and 1980s. His protagonists are not average and often are outsiders who experience awakenings that seem mystical. Herzog became a friend and acted in some of Korine’s films. Diane Arbus’ photographs focus on society’s marginal people and may have been an inspiration for Mister Lonely. The characters in the film are trying to deal with their individual crises just as Korine explores society’s infatuation with fame and vanity.
Deleted Scenes – Long takes, unused footage, repetitive scenes, and alternate takes are shown. This footage was discarded primarily to keep running time down, streamline narrative, or keep focus on the main characters. Nonetheless, several interesting vignettes that have little to do with the basic story have been retained.
Making-Of Featurette – Korine speaks about unrelated images that inspired Mister Lonely, such as nuns falling out of planes, which occurred to him in a dream. Korine grew up in a commune, so that suggested the film’s primary location of a setting where people of like minds could be together without judgment. Actor Diego Luna speaks about his unusual role; he’s playing a character named Michael pretending to be Michael Jackson. With 12 to 14-hour days the norm, Luna said he had little time to be himself. Korine felt Luna was a perfect fit for Michael Jackson since he could master the moves and had a similar physicality to the entertainer. The director mentions that he avoided including an Elvis impersonator among his characters. Footage of the crew filming an outdoor scene reveals the complexity of laying track for the camera dolly and using reflectors to add light to the subjects on an overcast day. Werner Herzog is Korine’s favorite director and a friend.
Booklet – The enclosed 20-page booklet contains the essay Stardom and Transcendence in Harmony Korine’s Mister Lonely by Kyle Turner along with several color photos.
Watching Mister Lonely is like living through an extended dream. There’s a through-line of characters, but numerous unrelated images make their way in, suggesting how dreams often defy time, place, and connectivity. Korine introduces many characters but some are merely background figures and only a few emerge as at least somewhat developed. Michael is the focus, but Korine keeps us from really getting into his head. Diego Luna does his best to simulate Michael Jackson’s soft manner of speech and be just Michael, but there’s so much of Korine’s self-indulgent content that the character is nearly marginalized. Mister Lonely is certainly interesting, but it’s the kind of interest one experiences when looking at the bizarre, peculiar, and offbeat.
- Dennis Seuling