After being premiered at the Sundance festival in its restored 4K version, and above all in its entirety for the first time, the cult film The Doom Generation arrives in Montreal at the Cinéma Moderne. This controversial satire written, directed and edited by Gregg Araki, starring Rose McGowan just before starring in Scream (Chills), is of key importance within the New Queer Cinema. During the 1990s, this independent cinematographic movement allowed LGBTQ+ themes to reach the big screen. With his films made in haste, Gregg Araki was one of the figureheads.
Designation New Queer Cinemaor sometimes Queer New Wavewas created by American professor and essayist B. Ruby Rich in 1992.
“Of course, new queer films and videos are not all the same, and do not share a single aesthetic vocabulary, a single strategy or concern. They are nevertheless united by a common style. Let’s call it “Homo Porno”: in each of these films there are traces of appropriation and pastiche, of irony […] In a definitive break with older humanist approaches and the films that accompanied identity politics, these works are irreverent, energetic, by turns minimalist and excessive. Above all, they are full of pleasure, ”she explains in the magazine Sight and Sound at a time when a plethora of films exploring LGBTQ+ themes, but above all gay, are taking the festivals by storm.
Later in her essay, the author writes about Gregg Araki and his then just-released third film, The Living End “Cinematically, [Gregg Araki] re-stages the films of the 1960s and 1970s: the first Godards, Bonnie and Clyde, Badlands [La balade sauvage], Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid [Butch Cassidy et le Kid], all of the fleeing duo films to have penetrated Araki’s consciousness. Here, however, both guys are HIV-positive, one is bored and the other is full of rage; both have nothing to lose. »
However, in several respects, all this also applies to The Doom Generation (released in Quebec under the title Lost and corrupt). The director of the future Mysterious Skin (Memory in the skin) And Kaboomtakes up the classic figure of lovers on the run, but this time he puts a mysterious and seductive psychopath in their path, for a love triangle of all orientations.
Said couple is formed by Jordan White (James Duval, seen next in independence day And Donnie Darko) and Amy Blue (Rose McGowan, Louise Brooks hair). After a night of partying, they hitchhike Xavier (Johnathon Schaech), a handsome stranger who, during a stop at a convenience store, “accidentally” kills the cashier.
And here is the trio launched on the road with the cops on their heels. Not that this prevents them from getting to know each other better, or from perpetrating more homicides.
A slaughtered film
At the time, the criticism was mostly negative. Roger Ebert is, without pun intended, an assassin, reproaching Gregg Araki for his excesses of style and his “detachment”. In varietyEmanuel Levy is on the other hand enthusiastic, evoking a “stunning” satire.
Upstream, the film had its premiere at Sundance in a version with some cuts made unwillingly by Gregg Araki. Alas, after being dropped by a first distributor, the film was bought by a second, and new cuts – radical ones – were imposed.
“A minor-prohibited version of Doom Generation was assembled without my consent, and it is terrible. The movie was literally slaughtered beyond recognition,” as Araki explained to Filmmaker Magazine on April 3, 2023.
So this new “director’s cut” of The Doom Generation was it entirely done in a way to bring back Gregg Araki’s original vision.
Paradoxically, the film was originally intended to be less nihilistic and transgressive than the filmmaker’s previous ones. That is to say, according to the wishes of his producer: the director, he had another idea in mind.
In an interview at IndieWire of August 17, 2022, Gregg Araki reveals about the genesis of his firebrand:
“Jim Stark, the producer, said to me, ‘You make these gay movies that gay people hate. They’re too punk for gays, and they hate them.” And he adds: “If you make a straight film, I will produce it and provide you with real money.” So I said, “Okay, sure,” because fuck it. Why not ? It is because of this that The Doom Generation to this subtitle, A Heterosexual Movie. So I made this heterosexual film, but in a very punk and naughty way, since I made it completely gay. »
punk forever
In the same article ofIndieWire, journalist and director Jude Dry is unequivocal in her appreciation of Gregg Araki: “All independent filmmakers working today should bow before the immense work of Araki. For breaking sexual taboos, for putting dirty queer punks on screen, and for giving a giant middle finger to the general public—all while making it so sexy, so easy and so damn fun. »
We confirm it: The Doom Generation demonstrates with impertinence and panache the validity of this assertion. In its version not revised and corrected, but remixed and restored, the film can finally be appreciated for what it is, that is to say one of the best of its director, and one of the boldest of a bygone movement.
Because around the year 2010, thanks in particular to the upstream success of Brokeback Mountain (Memories of Brokeback Mountain), with Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as a couple of tragic cowboys, and Milkstarring Sean Penn as slain activist Harvey Milk, the New Queer Cinema was gradually integrated into the cinema mainstream.
Filmmakers from the movement, such as Gus Van Sant (from Mala Noche To Milk Passing by My Own Private Idaho) and Todd Haynes (of Poison To carol Passing by Velvet Goldmine), acquired in the process increased recognition and respectability. And Gregg Araki? Very little for him!
“The whole aesthetic of my work comes from punk music and this attitude of giving a fuck and doing your own thing. »
Hope he continues.
The film The Doom Generation remixed and restored in 4K will be presented at the Modern cinema on May 6, 11 and 14.