Ken Park

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Movie
German title Ken Park
Original title Ken Park
Ken Park (logo) .png
Country of production USA
Netherlands
France
original language English
Publishing year 2002
length approx. 93 minutes
Age rating FSK 18
Rod
Director Larry Clark
Edward Lachman
script Harmony Korine
Larry Clark
production Kees Kasander
Jean-Louis Piel
music Howard couple
Matt Clark
camera Edward Lachman
Larry Clark
cut Andrew Hafitz
occupation

The feature film Ken Park is a coming-of-age film drama of the two US directors Larry Clark and Edward Lachman in 2002, the pubescent teenager from life is in a California town. The independent film revolves around the topics of sexual abuse , violence and alienation.

action

The teenager Ken Park is on his skateboard across the city of Visalia , California, to a skate park . There he sits down in the middle of the train and takes out a camcorder to film himself. Then he pulls a pistol from his backpack , holds it up to his temple with a smile, and pulls the trigger. His friend Shawn tells off- screen that Ken's name, read the wrong way round, means "Krap Nek" ( crap neck - a head full of crap). Then the protagonists of the film are briefly introduced.

Shawn seems to be the most stable of the four main characters. He is polite and social. As the story progresses, it is revealed that he has a relationship with Rhonda, his girlfriend's mother. He maintains close relationships with her family, although no one suspects the relationship between the two.

Claude is physically and emotionally abused by his unemployed, alcoholic father. The boy, meanwhile, takes loving care of his heavily pregnant mother, who only half-heartedly takes action against the abuse. The father repeatedly provokes Claude to test his manhood. When the father comes home one night drunk, he tries to assault Claude. He then leaves his parents' home and fled to friends.

Peaches is a girl who lives with her widowed and deeply religious father and is considered by him to be the embodiment of her mother. When he meets Peaches in bed with her boyfriend Curtis, he beats the boy and gives his daughter a curtain sermon with the Bible in her hand. Then he forces her to put on her mother's wedding dress and performs a wedding ritual with her.

Tate lives with his grandparents and is pampered by them like a small child. He reacts to this with a rude, insulting tone and lets himself be carried away again and again into irascible outbursts of anger. He masturbates to the moan of a tennis player whose game is being televised. He uses autoerotic asphyxia . Finally, he kills his grandparents in revenge: his grandfather for allegedly cheating while playing scrabble together ; his grandmother for not respecting his privacy. In these murders, he discovers that killing stimulates him sexually. He records the crime with a camcorder so that the police can reconstruct the cause and motive of the crime. Then he puts the teeth in his grandfather, lies down in bed with him naked and falls asleep.

The movie often cuts between subplots with no characters or events overlapping until the end. It is only when Tate is arrested for the murder of his grandparents that Shawn, Claude and Peaches meet and have threesome. In the end, the motive behind Ken Park's suicide becomes clear: he had his girlfriend pregnant. She replied to his suggestion to have an abortion by asking if he wished he had been aborted. When Ken Park realized that he would rather have never been born, he went to the skate park to kill himself.

reception

Ken Park made controversial headlines because of the revealing portrayal of some sex scenes and one violence scene. After its premiere at the Telluride Film Festival, the film did not find any distribution in the USA and therefore only reached a few cinemas. In Australia an age rating was rejected by the OFLC , which amounted to a ban. To protest this censorship, the film was shown illegally until the police intervened. In Germany, the film ran two years late in July 2004 with the FSK rating No youth release .

In an interview with Schnitt.de , director Clark said: “I didn't want this film to end in hopelessness and make it look like the children couldn't make it. So my idea was to construct a sex scene around the children to offer them some kind of release. [...] If the whole world confronts you as a child, then ultimately you only have the other children. It's a film about forging connections and uniting oneself. "

Andreas Busche from Berlin's taz praises the acting quality of the amateur actors and also the director: “Sex and violence, Clark's favorite topics since his early photo books Tulsa and Teenage Lust , determine the interplay between people in Ken Park too . But a new gentleness is noticeable under the desolate images. The tone sounds more conciliatory than one was used to with Clark. "

Carsten Baumgardt from Filmstarts.de also rated the film as worth seeing: “In one scene, James Ransone masturbates in front of the camera while Anna Kurnikowa moans on the tennis court on TV. He strangles himself in Michael Hutchence manner with a belt on the door handle and finally ejaculates in close-up. Even in the revealing European cinema, such images were seldom seen in this form. Not even in the controversial and similarly open Berlinale winner Intimacy . However, the scene is in the service of the film and does not have to accept the accusation of voyeurism. The same applies to the other nude photos that reveal even more erect genitals. "

Susan Vahabzadeh from the Süddeutsche Zeitung sums it up: “Clark ... lets a cabinet of monstrosities pass by, a world in which sexual assault on one's own children, domestic violence and disruption seem to be perfectly normal. 'Ken Park' is fascinating, disturbing, sometimes moving. 'Ken Park' is best in its unspectacular moments - when the kids sit together and talk. "

Oliver Hüttmann from Spiegel Online describes that “there is a veil of melancholy over the four episodes of the film, and with all the horror of abuse, prohibitions and violence, there is also compassion for everyone involved. Clark doesn't denounce, he doesn't accuse anyone. The judgment is left to the viewer alone ”.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Show everything - Ken Park at schnitt.de
  2. ^ Andreas Busche: Anmut in Suburbia In: Die Tageszeitung (taz archive), July 21, 2004. Accessed on September 6, 2017.
  3. ^ Carsten Baumgardt: Ken Park criticism of the Filmstarts editorial team, at Filmstarts.de
  4. ↑ Susan Vahabzadeh: Sex on the verge of nervous breakdown In: Süddeutsche Zeitung, May 11, 2010. Retrieved September 6, 2017.
  5. ↑ Oliver Hüttmann: Sehnsucht, Sex und Schrecken In: Spiegel Online, July 22, 2004. Accessed on September 6, 2017.