watched: above the below, harmony korine’s documentary about david blaine’s 44-day fast suspended above london.  i’ve always really been bothered by gummo and julien donkey-boy because they subject people who korine has identified as outcasts and rejects to an unabashed scrutiny.  i feel like korine doesn’t mean to enlighten us or familiarise us with his subjects (like nancy burson’s photo series, craniofacial, does), but rather to reinforce their status as others – these people are freaks and worth watching for entertainment, he seems to say.  because his previous films have featured actors playing these characters, i’ve always felt like he’s cowardly, realising it would be too offensive to stare at ‘real’ freaks but willing to use a proxy to titillate his audience in the same way. in above the below, he does the same thing in the real world, letting david blaine and some of his fans seem unsympathetically bizarre – and for some reason, now that it’s nonfiction, it works for me.  korine removes the context that explains much of blaine’s weirdness, and maybe that’s right – maybe the context is just something we cling to to satisfy out love of narrative, maybe things are less explicable and direct than we think.  you start to think it ties in well with blaine’s project, as he talks about the ego you lose when you’re deprived in that way for so long – there’s something there about being animal, about realising the extent to which we construct our worlds.  but korine kicks in a wry twist: after the cathartic let-down, the emotional ambulance ride, we cut to blaine – thinwristed in his hospital gown, he is unable to break away from his reflection in a mirror, picking at his messy hair and laughing at what he’s become.  blaine’s ego doesn’t melt away so easily, and korine has maybe – maybe – won me over.