Crumb (1994) or, The Artist As a Cartoonist

12/30/2014

Crumb (1994) or, The Artist As a Cartoonist

♥♥♥♥♥

+ 2nd Best Movie of the Year

The curiosity-inspiring poster for Terry Zwigoff's Crumb

QUICK REVIEW:

Robert Crumb, the famed American cartoon experimentalist and societal critic, gets his work and large parts of his life documented here through comic strips, his current and former girlfriends, his children, brothers and mother, as well as through connoisseurs, critics and admirers.

We get very far around the person Crumb in this artist portrayal, and particularly his brothers as well, who couldn't be termed any more well than the man himself, in the two hours that this great documentary runs, which isn't a second too long. Crumb's brother Charles actually committed suicide before the film was released.
Crumb is no technical wonder, almost on the opposite, it is disinterested in technical brilliance. It is made by Wisconsinite master movie-maker Terry Zwigoff (Ghost World (2001)), who has said that at the time of making of the film, (which may well account for its technical side), he was “averaging an income of about $200 a month and living with back pain so intense that I spent three years with a loaded gun on the pillow next to my bed, trying to get up the nerve to kill myself.”
Crumb's own observations, as well as those of his brothers, are sharp and loaded with a similar kind of pessimism and hopelessness. Art is examined and borders are explored and challenged. The film has been called the greatest and one of the greatest documentaries ever made by a slew of critics, and together with the also greatly Oscar-snubbed Hoop Dreams (1994), it became instrumental for an improvement of the Oscar documentary nomination procedure.
Crumb is really good and full of heavy material, unlike Zwigoff's previous documentary, the still good Louie Bluie (1985).

Related review:

Terry Zwigoff: Art School Confidential (2006) or, World of Phoney
Bad Santa (2003) - Zwigoff sticks dynamite under Christmas in this modern dark comedy classic

1994 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess

Here's some of Crumb's evocative cartoons:

Watch the amazing trailer for this amazing movie right here

Cost: Unknown
Box office: 3.1 mil. $ (US only)
= Big hit
[But considering the nine (!) years it took Zwigoff to make the film, the success is relative. Crumb won Best Documentary prizes from Sundance, National Board of Review, Los Angeles, New York and Boston Film Critics as well as the National Society of Film Critics.]

What do you think of Crumb?
Have you ever seen a documentary like it?

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12/30/2014