The premise of Harmony Korine’s new film, Mister Lonely, sounds pretty funny: a lonely and struggling Michael Jackson impersonator meets a woman who lives her life as Marilyn Monroe. She invites him to live in a commune with a slew of celebrity impersonators, including her husband, Charlie Chaplin, and their daughter Shirley Temple.
The adjectives that come to mind when watching this movie are the same ones used to describe the life of the real Michael Jackson: tragic, sad, bizarre and, yes, even funny sometimes.
Writer-director Korine is perhaps best known to mainstream audiences as the writer of the disturbingly raw 1995 film Kids, and has since been quietly building a name for himself on the indie-film circuit, directing fiercely independent and unusual films such as Gummo and Julien Donkey-Boy in the late ’90s. In this way, Mister Lonely is quite unexpected.
The story centers on Diego Luna’s street-performing Michael Jackson whose utter dislike for himself and failure to fit in has led him to a life of pretense as an escape from reality. When he meets a Marilyn Monroe impersonator, played by Samantha Morton, after a gig at a nursing home, she invites him to stay with her in a rural French commune of fellow celebrity impersonators. He reluctantly obliges, leaving behind his lonely existence in Paris. Marilyn’s husband, a volatile Charlie Chaplin impersonator played by Denis Lavant, immediately suspects Michael and Marilyn’s budding infatuation, and palatable tension and resentment quickly build.
All the inhabitants of this idyllic commune are trying to escape reality and a world of mediocrity. In this setting they can live in a dream world where they become what they wish they were, no questions asked. While we never learn any of their actual names, there is a real sadness to these people. A subtle sense of foreboding hovers over the entire film, and one finds oneself waiting for the inevitable tragedy to strike.
Michael, in a way, brings a sense of normalcy to the retreat of societal misfits, but with it comes a grim dose of reality in the way of disease and death, as they are forced to deal with their problems in very real ways. When they prepare to give a public performance – touted as "the greatest show on Earth" – in their makeshift theater, one begins to wonder if these people are delusional or simply naive. Perhaps it’s a little of both.
Mister Lonely treads precariously along the line between sincere eccentricity and embarrassing quirkiness, thankfully never falling too far into the latter. The film threatens to fall apart altogether as it nears the finale, becoming downright bizarre, but the absurdity never really feels out of place. Michael eventually comes to the realization that living as someone else isn’t necessarily better than living as himself, and that he can’t entirely escape reality. It will find him, and he may as well embrace it.
Throughout the film, a sub-story about a commune of nuns who, like these celebrity impersonators, form their own reality by making faith-testing leaps from an airplane is interwoven. Legendary director Werner Herzog plays Father Umbrillo, the nuns’ morally upstanding leader and copilot for their aeronautical feats. Like Diego Luna, Herzog brings a sense of tragic hilarity to the film, making it hard to commiserate with such inherently pitiful characters.
To his loyal fans, such a sentimental film as Mister Lonely may seem like a bit of a departure for Korine, but audiences largely unfamiliar with his previous work will find the film brimming with originality, and it is exponentially more accessible than any of his previous work. The performances are heartfelt and honest, and the story, despite its flaws, never feels anything but genuine.
With Mister Lonely, Korine has made something most would never have expected – a touching, sweet film about the fear of facing reality and the longing for acceptance – but has done it with such freshness and inventiveness that it could not have been made by anyone else.
