“How glorious it is and also how Painful to be an Exception.” So reads the caption on one of underground artist Robert Crumb’s magazine covers (quoting French poet Alfred de Musset). “Crumb,” a documentary by Terry Zwigoff, masterfully captures and presents three themes: the exceptional nature of Crumb himself, the glory of his art, and the pain his work reflects.
Crumb is shy and unprepossessing in appearance and speech, making him the unlikeliest of narrators. But Zwigoff is a patient observer, and Crumb’s thoroughly original voice quickly comes to seem more fascinating than eccentric. He describes his various interests – which include old jazz and blues albums, critiques of mass commercialization, and big-hipped women – in an unwaveringly nasal monotone. Crumb remains aloof in almost every setting, showing delight only when he is permitted to spank and to piggy-back the plump girls whom he fetishizes.
Crumb’s dispassionate tone is mirrored by Zwigoff’s non-judgmental documentary style. The effect is to put the audience deeply and fearlessly into the mind of the artist. The viewer is able to process and appreciate Crumb’s obsession with deviant sexuality, his ironic resentment both of being ignored and of being celebrated, and his troubled relationships with nearly every person in his life, not as the products of a sick mind, but as the inspirations for magnificent art.
Crumb’s work, much of which is featured in the movie, is challenging and personal. His characters frolic through the classic Freudian taboos – rape, murder, and incest – and quite a few additional taboos that Crumb seems to have invented, without ever developing any insights. The critical response could not be more varied. Art reviewer Robert Hughes sees Crumb as a post-modern Brueghel who scathingly satirizes commercial society. Deirdre English, former editor of “Mother Jones,” considers Crumb’s work dangerous and pornographic. And Dian Hanson, a successful pornographer herself, celebrates the very fetishistic and misogynistic qualities of Crumb’s art that give the other commentators such discomfort. Here again, Zwigoff’s neutral approach to the relationship between artist, art, and observer is well-aimed. Because the film operates within a non-judgmental forum, Crumb’s work – including its genius and its grotesqueness – is seen fully from all sides. Zwigoff generously lets the audience draw its own conclusions.
As well as the director presents both Crumb and his work, the most powerful part of the film addresses the family dysfunction that shaped them. The Crumb household in the 1950s was headed by a tyrannical, violent father and an amphetamine-addicted mother. Sadly, the sins of the parents have made victims of their three sons. Middle brother Robert is perhaps the healthiest of the trio. By channeling his depression into art, he gives it both form and release. “If I don’t draw for a while, I get really crazy, depressed, and suicidal,” he claims – and this makes the viewer doubly grateful for his prolific output.
Youngest brother Maxon has sublimated his pain in less productive ways. He sits on a bed of nails and passes a fabric strip through his intestines. For fun, he engages in relatively minor sexual assaults. Maxon seems to have reached an equilibrium in which his oddball behaviors balance out his days and enable him to move forward.
Oldest brother Charles has simply repressed all of his pains and desires. Having managed to be simultaneously one of the best-looking and the least-popular children in his high school, Charles gave up on having a normal life and never moved out of the family home. “Can you give me one good reason for leaving the house?” he asks. Given the lifetime of rejection Charles experienced by the age of 18, nobody can think of one.
Zwigoff captures the reactions of three grown men to the raw pains of a torment-filled childhood. Here, the director does render judgment, to shattering effect. The boys are ill-equipped to live in this world, and their parents are to blame. The brothers are all talented artists, and “Crumb” presents them as examples of the linkage between genius and madness.
If the movie sometimes feels like a therapy session, this may be attributable to the severe depression affecting the director himself during the six years he spent filming. Zwigoff and Crumb are close friends. No doubt, their mutual understanding affected the sensitivity and honesty with which Crumb and his family are portrayed. “Crumb” is a work both of and about artistic genius.
DIRECTOR:Terry Zwigoff PRODUCERS: Albert Berger, Lianne Halfon, Lawrence Wilkinson CAST: Robert Crumb (himself) Maxon Crumb (himself), Aline Crumb (herself) Charles Crumb (himself) MPAA RATING: R
