Larry Clark, known for films like “Kids” and “Bully,” is often labeled a controversial director. However, the controversy largely stems from the fact that he entered directing as a fully formed adult at the age of fifty-two. He pursues his vision without regard for public opinion, and the result is what it is. Clark is often criticized for not “consulting the people” and accused of all sorts of sins.
But he’s not a novice; he’s been earning a living for a long time and tasted fame as a photographer. His response to the accusations is straightforward: “If you don’t like it, don’t watch it.” Therefore, to avoid further misunderstandings, it’s essential to warn those who should definitely avoid Larry Clark’s latest film, “Ken Park.”
Who Should Avoid “Ken Park”
Not for the Young and Naive
Firstly, the film is absolutely not for young viewers – not even those under sixteen. Ideally, it should be avoided until the arrival of one’s first child or at least until marriage – that is, until the foundation for illusions crumbles. Illusions, after all, can be wonderful.
Not for Those Clinging to Illusions
Secondly, “Ken Park” is not for those who cling to illusions without any basis, those who blindly believe in “family values” while interpreting them as complete permissiveness for themselves and denying everything to everyone else in the family. Those who still sincerely organize family celebrations with children they’ve hated since birth (for outliving them) and parents they’ve hated since birth (for still being alive while happiness eludes them) simply won’t understand what they’re seeing. And thank goodness they won’t understand; it’s too late for them anyway.
Not for Those in Denial
Thirdly, Clark’s film is not for those who no longer harbor illusions but still hide it, those who blindly believe that concealing absence somehow restores presence. This also means hiding a glimpse of bare thigh if it accidentally shows in a skirt slit, or a hairy chest if a button accidentally comes undone on a collar, not to mention the details of masturbation, cunnilingus, and group sex. “Ken Park” is definitely not for those who see the mere presence of sperm or urine in a frame as evidence of a lack of art.
A Matter of Respect, Not Love
However, even if you don’t fall into any of these categories, it doesn’t guarantee you’ll like the film. For me, for example, it still only evokes respect, not love. Initially, it was even irritating.
What bothered me at first was the abundance of physical ugliness without much apparent meaning. A pale, pimply teenager with a Neanderthal-like face is intimately touched between the legs by the slender and attractive mother of his girlfriend. I’m not one to prioritize appearances, but if there’s no compelling reason to showcase age-related pimples, it’s best to avoid it. At first, it seemed like Clark was deliberately flooding the screen with “strawberry,” with porn, which works unfailingly, even if not in his favor, because Clark had nothing to say. But even before the finale, it became clear that this wasn’t entirely true; he does have something to say, and the emphasis on the simplest details of physiology in the film is absolutely necessary. So, it’s enough to take a closer look.
A Documentary of a Certain Kind of Life
The film, which begins with a boy on a skateboard cruising through a sunny California town, is bookended by this boy in a truly ambiguous, meaningful, and maximally documentary portrayal of a certain kind of people’s lives. It’s so unpretentiously documentary and deliberately simplified because the people are simple. Imagine the same picture in Naro-Fominsk instead of California. Even my nervous system wouldn’t withstand the mass of vomit in which all our simple, fence-dwelling alcoholics drown, and the urine with which they douse the heads of girls, pre-raped in the, as always, unlit entrance. Clark’s California is still mild, and the boy riding the board is rather embarrassing. Even the fact that a minute later, in the same sunny morning square, he will sit down, smile, take out a gun, and blow his brains out in front of everyone doesn’t dispel the embarrassment. You think: so, again, the pathology of a difficult childhood. Well, we’ve seen it in “Kids” and God knows where else, starting with silent cinema (“Girls in Uniform” by Leontine Sagan). But the boy is only needed for the end, when everything becomes clear, and for the simple title. His name was Ken Park, and he was from a company of the same average urban California teenagers, which will be discussed.
The Simplicity of Existence
It’s about four (actually more) variants of the simplest existence over several days. The fullness of the simplest instincts, from relieving oneself to a juicy spit in the mouth of a lover, is the plot. That’s why teenagers arose, because at this age they are only becoming a “certain kind.” Observing them – Tate, Peaches, Claude, Sean, then Claude’s pregnant mother or Peaches’ widowed father – everyone will explain in their own way why they become them. The kind, roughly speaking, turns out to be boorish in all manifestations, with the only difference being the degree of instinctiveness, vegetative or animal (“Oh! He became an animal, he cut up his grandmother and grandfather”). But explaining “why” pulls the whole movie, and the further, the more - just not to identify yourself with them.
The Average of California
Nevertheless, it was no accident that Larry Clark took absolutely average California. With its documentary completeness, he literally slips “explanations.” Because in fact, if part of the boorishness was distinguished by particular wealth, it would only clutter the film. It would clutter “socialism” - just as if part was distinguished by good luck (“Oh! He left, he left”), the film would not have enough “social psychology.” There was not enough “cultural autonomy” and “language games” - in case the boorishness had a career guidance, not to mention higher education (“Oh! He reads not the Bible, but Tolkien, Kerouac, Fowles”). But Clark is aware that it is the boorishness, and not the successfully enriched reader of Fowles, that becomes “for some reason”, for “reasons” that are constantly lying under their feet. And the viewer who found an “explanation” why he is not Sean, not Claude, not Peaches and not Tate, is actually at risk.
The Risk of Recognition
Here he is wealthy, professional, successful, family, even in love, and still - doesn’t he pee on occasion, sipping beer from a can from the shelf above the toilet, into which the same beer pours out of him? In general, it’s just funny, and is it never possible? And if it is possible, then how much? And is the reading of Fowles connected with “what and how much”? Is that where the dog is buried at all? All the cinema provoking the viewer to dissociate himself from the boorishness, Clark eventually leaves only one way out. Acting by the method “from the opposite”, from “yes”, from permissiveness, from its accumulation, when everything is possible, everything, everything, he proves that “something is still impossible”. If you do not limit yourself in anything, then there is no simplest existence. “I will not have an abortion. Are you now grateful to your mother that she did not have an abortion before your birth?”. The boy is silent at first, then answers effectively, for the full picture. Being poor, complexed, ignorant and unloved, he is still capable of protest. He is just so capable, and there is no other answer.
The Path to Understanding
But the viewer can only get the answer after recognizing that he is the same as those children and parents, grandmothers and grandfathers, brothers and sisters from California. Only after recognizing that he is exactly the same plant, even if it seems not at all, there is a chance for existence “just like that”. There was a stupid story in our childhood by Ibragimbekov "And then I said “no”. I just said so - the details were really stupid. True, in my opinion, having proved the insufficiency of instinctive existence and coming to the complete groundlessness of limiting permissiveness, Clark was too carried away with educational aspects. “Ken Park” as a result is an exemplary example of how you should never, ever behave with loved ones, raise children, treat old people. But if I have been proving to myself for many years what is possible and what is not, and not at a certain, but at every given moment, all his proofs are a repetition of what has been passed. They do not surprise, do not allow to fall in love with this movie. But, undoubtedly, it deserves respect for the level of evidence.