In an industry like film, what constitutes reality? When every detail is planned, constructed, monitored,and recorded, how possible is it for a viewer to receive anything reflecting the ugly tangibles that people live day to day? For many directors, authenticity is low on their priority list. The proliferation of complex CGI has not changed this. That dragon that used to be made of clay and moved like it had Parkinson's disease is now glossy and well integrated with the real-live people; but, it's still a fucking dragon, which means it isn't real, Francis. But as technology presses forward, pulling filmmaking deeper and deeper into places that don't exist, some try different methods to create a sense and feeling of truth. Some choose to use untrained actors, others seek out screenwriters with a better understanding of slang, and some even depict sex and violence with a degree of direct frankness usually reserved for security camera footage. Larry Clark is known for all three.

Clark is most notorious for his films involving teens, most notably Kids. As a director, he has had some more plot driven features in Bully and Welcome to Paradise, but the style that has marked his work with screenwriter Harmony Korine has been much more stark and disturbing. It's not to say that there is a lack of a plot, but rather than a constantly directed narrative, these films opt for sequences or disturbing imagery intermingled with normal trappings of adolesence. In Kids, a group of friends in New York spend a summer day in the city doing what teens are expected to do, only at almost all points, to an extreme. They get in a fight, only they nearly beat their opponent to death. They experiment with drugs, except that some of them take a combination of heroin and LSD. They obsess about sex, but one of the characters ends up giving AIDS to almost everyone he knows. These extreme depicitions of young people are hard to process. On the one hand, Clark and Korine's skillful inclusion of the childlike behavior of teens along with their depraved lifestyle is hard to not be moved by. On the other, it is difficult to buy that anything like this could constitute much more than a fringe. And the question then becomes, what point is trying to be made?

It's too hard to find a scene from Ken Park that's appropriate for a wide audience, so here's a rabbit.

The network of characters in Ken Park amazingly all receive fairly evenhanded treatment. Tate, probably the most depraved character in the film, torments his grandparents, graphically masturbates, and beats his three legged dog. However Korine and Clark skillfully explain (without justifying) his behavior through a delicate scene involving some neighborhood girls and jump rope. Claude's father berates him for what he sees as signs of weakness, but privately despairs over his deteriorating bond with his son and loneliness. Shawn secretly has sex with his girlfriend's mother, but the sleazy circumstances are given a new dimension by the fact that he is clearly in love with her. And Peaches's father careens from a gentle, bereft widower to a desperate delusional man. It's amazing that this character development was able to shine through the raw grittiness we witness throughout this film, but they do, and it's Ken Park's saving grace.

In the film industry today, even documentaries have been boiled down to cleverly edited essays. (Propaganda you agree with is still propaganda, Michael Moore.) Ken Park is worth watching not for the intense scenes of sex and violence. If anything it's worth watching despite them. The value of this film is in the constantly evolving characters and the wonderfully portrayed, although often disturbing, relationships between them. If you can find some way to see it, you should.