Seeing (Infra)red with Harmony Korine
AGGRO DR1FT is as silly as it is mesmeric
Harmony Korine has spent much of the last three decades straddling the fine line between brilliance and bullshit, often on the wrong side of it. His arthouse provocations have been comparatively tame in recent years — Spring Breakers was among the first A24 releases, while The Beach Bum starred Matthew McConaughey — but AGGRO DR1FT finds him back in experimental form. (This will likely come as welcome news to Werner Herzog, who was deeply moved by a shot of fried bacon taped to a bathroom wall in Gummo — a representative example of Korine’s sensibility.) If you know anything about this 80-minute whatsit, it’s that it was shot entirely in infrared — a gimmicky-sounding setup that, to no one’s greater surprise than my own, results in some of the most arresting visuals in recent memory.
The barely-there plot concerns an assassin who spends most of his time monologuing about what a great assassin he is while preparing for a hit that has him in an especially philosophical mood; it’s hard to listen to this stream-of-consciousness self-mythologizing without getting the sense that Korine, who recently turned 50 and founded a creative collective called EDGLRD, is in legacy mode.
At least he’s still willing to experiment. AGGRO DR1FT feels like a Grand Theft Auto cutscene directed by David Lynch before being passed through an I Think You Should Leave filter for good measure, with Korine settling into what appears to be his final form: the Florida Man as auteur. The visuals may take some getting used to, feeling as they do like they were processed in 4 Loko, but they’re truly mesmeric at times. Korine’s work has always been a love-it-or-hate-it affair, and it’s nice to be on the other side of that line for a change.
Lynch/I think you should leave? Sign me up!