Mister Lonely

Just be yourself

2008

Review: May 13, 2008

Director: Harmony Korine

Starring: Diego Luna, Samantha Morton, James Fox, Werner Herzog

That would be lovely.

THE SETUP:

Michael Jackson impersonator joins a Marilyn Monroe impersonator and friends in the Scottish Highlands.

DISCUSSION:

I confess to being completely fascinated with the phenomena of Michael Jackson. So I was immediately interested in a movie about a Michael Jackson impersonator who meets up with a Marilyn Monroe impersonator I immediately hit up my movie buddy and luckily he was interested, too. Turns out it really has nothing to do with Michael Jackson per se, but it was still a wonderfully oddball little film.

We begin with a slow motion shot as Diego Luna as Michael Jackson rides a mini motorbike around a track as a little stuffed monkey with wings sticks out the side, while we hear Bobby Vinton sing "Mister Lonely." The review in the Village Voice spends half its length talking about this one shot (which is another thing that got me interested in seeing this), and yes… it's quite nice.

So we join Michael (he goes by Michael) in a Paris park, doing his routine and trying to make money. He meets a friend in an office—Psychologist? Friend? Advocate of the impersonator?—who encourages him, gives him money, and sets him up with a gig at an old folks home. At the gig, Michael mocks the real MJ's "Hoo-hoo!" and sings to it "Don't die! Don't die! Live forever!" There he spies Samantha Morton as a Marilyn Monroe impersonator. She tells him that she is married to a man who "lives as" Charlie Chaplin and they have a daughter who lives as Shirley Temple, and invites him to come stay with them at their commune for impersonators in a castle in the Scottish Highlands.

Meanwhile, in some jungley place, Werner Herzog [yes, THAT Werner Herzog] plays a missionary air pilot who takes nuns up to drop rice and food supplies on neighboring villages. He is as bizarrely intense and manic as ever, and though he rarely makes you laugh out loud, his whole being is kind of funny. While dropping rice, one of the nuns falls out of the plane. She tumbles through the air, and when she falls—she lives!

So at the commune, a whole lot of nothing happens, but all of it interesting and amusing. We meet the other impersonators—a pope [the always delightful James Fox], Madonna, the Three Stooges, Sammy Davis, Jr., etc. They take a mud bath. They wander around outside. Michael listens to a tape he has made, addressed "to the world and everyone in it." They learn that their sheep have hoof and mouth disease, and are forced to kill all of them. While this happens, we hear a wonderful folk recording of "The Hangman" by John Jacob Niles. You can hear part of it here. Meanwhile Charlie is jealous of Michael, thinking he's getting it on with Marilyn. At one point they go sunbathing and she begs him not to let her fall asleep, as she doesn't want to get sunburned. She promptly falls asleep, he sneaks away, and she wakes a few hours later, completely sunburned. Upon returning home he has no excuse, but becomes impassioned and is all over her body as she writhes in pain and begs him to stop. Meanwhile Herzog is exhorting all of the others nuns to jump out of the plane without parachutes, saying that if their faith is true they will fly.

So the movie is made up of these little moments, and some of them advance the narrative between the characters—like the sunburning thing—and most of them don't, but they do all contribute to the overall mood. The mood we [and most of the theater, who were giggling throughout] experienced is a kind of amused delight, because despite the potent undercurrent of melancholy in the story, and it is a considerable one, the whole thing is buoyant, surprising and delightful.

I asked my friend what he thought it was "about," if anything… and he didn't really think anything. Toward the end there are speeches that sound like summaries of subtext that say things like "there is no truer soul than those who impersonate," and one character, upon putting away his costume and appearing as himself, is greeted with a bewildered "I don't know who this person is before me." There is also a crashing resolution to the flying nun situation that seems to make some sort of statement, but not one that is ever fully articulated—which is a tremendous asset to the movie. It just floats along, lets you form your own impressions, tickles your brain, eyes and sense of melancholy for 2 hours, then fades away. Me like.

SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?

You have to be ready to accept a very loose narrative, but if so, I say go for it.