Rating: R
Genres:
Visual Arts
Culture & Society
Release Date: 03/09/1999
SubTitles: English
Dubbed: English
Sound: DS
Run Time: 119 min
Distributor/Studio: Columbia TriStar
So well-regarded was the documentary
Crumb (1994) that the failure of it and of the same year's equally acclaimed
Hoop Dreams (1994) to result in Oscar nominations caused a media furor which forced the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to revamp its documentary nomination process.
Robert Crumb is a respected but controversial underground comic book artist and writer whose creations include the popular "Keep on Truckin'" and
Fritz the Cat (1972). Crumb's adult subject matter includes weird sexual obsessions, social criticism, and personal, confessional observations about abnormal human psychology. The genesis and meaning of Crumb's work is explained through a series of interviews with his colleagues, former lovers, and especially family members, which reveal a horrific upbringing that has crippled both Crumb and his siblings -- but has also fueled the artist's groundbreaking work. A long-time friend of the film's subject, director
Terry Zwigoff followed
Crumb (1994) with another comic book-related project,
Ghost World (2000), a drama based on a story from the anthology series "Eightball" by
Daniel Clowes.
~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
Filmmaker
Terry Zwigoff was able to make
Crumb because of his friendship with the subject, but the film is definitely not hagiography. Because much of the artist's work is so personal, any study of
Robert Crumb must take into account his prickly and decidedly randy personality.
Zwigoff also had a great sense of timing, catching
Crumb in a bit of a mid-life crisis, as he decamps from his longtime home in California to the south of France. The energy of the 1960s which fueled some of
Crumb's most celebrated art has long ago dissipated, and when
Crumb convincingly disavows being identified with that tumultuous time (he hates
rock music, preferring to listen to his collection of
blues music on original 78 rpm vinyl), you sense that he's a man who has been out of step all his life. Rather than merely depict the symptoms of
Crumb's worried mind,
Zwigoff includes enormously effective interview material with two of
Robert's brothers (one of whom died after film was completed). Few filmmakers are allowed that kind of privileged look into their subjects' upbringing, and the brothers' recollections of their childhood and ruminations on their blighted lives suggest that art provided
Robert with a reasonably effective way of dealing with past traumas.
~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide
;)
