Harmony Korine has done it again. In his new release “Spring Breakers”, he not only managed to once again ravage cinematic conventions with a bigger budget and a more pronounced style, but also the expectations of millions of eager Americans mesmerized by the stellar cast he rounded up. He took two Disney princesses, an ABC Family “Pretty Little Liar”, his young wife, a respectable Hollywood Renaissance Man, a well-established rapper, and two wannabe-gangster twins, completely stripped them of their prior associations and dressed them into unrecognizable characters who accustom the style and of his dark cinematic universe.
In spite of my advantage of prior exposure to the artistic weirdness of Harmony Korine, I was still, nevertheless, a victim that was dazzled by the shiny cast and the expected grandiosity of “Spring Breakers.” The only thing of the movie plot I was sure of was that four college girls desperate to go on an MTV-approved Floridian Spring-Break would take great measures to get the funding to do so. I didn’t know anything about who they were as people, how Oscar-nominee James Franco—clad in cornrows and a silver grill—would play into it, or what kind of direction Korine would use to execute this plan. Another main important question I had in mind before viewing it was if the cast of “Spring Breakers” attracted a mainstream crowd, would it have more of a conventional structure, or would Korine fool the mainstream crowd and stick by the raw flavor of his low-budget cult classics like 1995’s “Kids” or 1997’s “Gummo”?
Needless to say, Korine fooled us all.
Instead of an accurate rendition of an innocent Spring Break getaway, Korine gives us a hyper-reality glimpse of the darker realm of the college-universe, using the four main characters as his instruments of expression. Faith (Selena Gomez), Candy (Vanessa Hudgens), Cotty (Rachel Korine), and Brit (Ashley Benson) are all childhood friends who after being disillusioned with the constraints of their studies and life at college, find themselves willing to take great risks to escape on a Spring Break vacation. Not only does Spring Break signify an escape from reality to them, but it also offers a whirlwind of alcohol, drugs, and careless partying with fellow coeds in the setting of the typical South Florida Spring break. On the surface, the concept of the movie does an excellent job luring our age group by dangling detailed images of beer, boobs, itsy-bitsy bikinis, and various colors of nail polish, all set to a contemporary score done by ex-Chili Pepper/“Drive” composer Cliff Martinez with the help of dubstep king Skrillex. But underneath the shallow surface of “Spring Breakers” boils a raw tension that took a far left from innocent college debauchery to serial gangster themes that had the power to send chills all over my body.
What elevated the film was Korine’s great artistic direction to create the only two characters that reveal their true faces to the audience to be polar opposites. Faith (Selena Gomez) whose actual faith leads her to have a moral conscious and a voice of reason is viewed as an outcast with the girls, whereas Alien (James Franco) a local white rapper who grew up in a black neighborhood and whose motto happens to be “People told me you gotta change, I’m all about stacking change” (Korine) is viewed as an attractive force to the other three girls. The interaction of these two characters creates a beautiful cinematic contrast, and even moreso enhances the uniform immorality of Candy, Cotty, and Brit. They are unnervingly desensitized to any extreme violence and naïve to the consequence of any risks they take or threat the presence of immediate danger, whose values appear to have been corrupted by the copious amounts of drugs consumed.
One day after viewing the movie, where I had time to collect my thoughts and decipher my reactions, I found that the uncomfortable sensations resonated more with me. Not minding the explicit sexual innuendos and the deeply rooted appeal to violence, what disturbed me the most about “Spring Breakers” was the nature of James Franco’s character Alien. With an actor who has excelled at both comedy (“Pineapple Express”) and drama (“127 Hours”), I was hesitant to take James Franco seriously in such an uncanny role as a white rapper. My initial impression—and mistake—was assuming that the role was going to be corny if anything. The more the movie transitioned and his character progressed into the second half of the movie, the more I realized that I went from not taking him seriously to taking him too seriously. The turning point for me came when he was pitted against his nemesis Big Arch (rapper Gucci Mane) and I suddenly realized that Franco was many layers deep into portraying Alien and had completely masked any recognizable hint of James Franco. In fact all of the girls did this for their characters, but his was more bone chilling. This uneasiness was enhanced when Alien would sit at his piano and creepily chant in his gangster slur, “Spring Break…Spring Break forever…”
Like any Harmony Korine film I see, I still have yet to decide if I liked it or not. There are many elements that would prove that I didn’t, but at the same time this indecisiveness is rooted from a sensibility of wanting more out of him. I want to relate to the four girls, I really want to; but that’s hard when you have no idea why they are the way they are. What tragic past occurred in their lives to make them drop their values after only one week of vacation? Whether this desensitization is blamed on the drugs or society or just because they were bored with the smooth track of college, internship, career…this mind-boggle holds me back from making my own critical decision. It’s rare that you find a movie where no two people will experience it the same, which surely makes it a 2013 must-see. To make it a more enjoyable experience, do some further research into Harmony Korine and his personal style, because without these expectations fresh in your head, it is easy to get distracted by the exterior and be completely surprised to only be exposed to the darker and more sordid interior. Harmony Korine has a talented way of doing that.