A documentary examining the work and inspiration of Zap
Comix artist R. Crumb
Director:
Terry Zwigoff
Presented by
David Lynch
In most movies, the audience can say, "It'll be okay. This is just a movie." But because Crumb is a documentary, the audience can only watch (or leave), but everything will not be okay. Crumb is more than a movie; it holds the shards of a life.
R. Crumb is Robert Crumb, the artist of the picture of four guys in big shoes stepping out under the words "Keep on truckin'." Other well-known Crumb creations include the cover to Janis Joplin's "Cheap Thrills" album and the character Fritz the Cat, whom animator Ralph Bakshi adapted into the first x-rated animation movie. However, to know this much about Crumb is to know almost nothing about him or his art.
Comments from family and critics show Crumb to be more than a satiric cartoonist. With Crumb's cooperation, director Terry Zwigoff takes the camera into Crumb's childhood home, home being where most world views begin. Five-year-old Robert survived the broken collarbone his father gave him one Christmas Day to grow up and become a successful artist. His brothers Charles and Max--both brilliant artists themselves--were not so fortunate. Art could not save them. As Crumb talks with both brothers on camera about their mental illnesses, one wonders what art can do.
Crumb is as close to the edge as a film gets without
going over. The word "dark" does not fully describe
this film. Things can hide or be hidden in darkness Crumb
puts the light on the dark corners from which Crumb's character's
have emerged.
There is no doubt about where the edge is because both of Crumb's brothers clearly go over it during the course of the film (Crumb's two sisters refused to be interviewed for the film). The articulate and honest way Charles describes his own mental illness fascinates. Charles says that he views his brother as a competitor. The competition can be seen in a collaboration with Crumb on an epic comic of Treasure Island. During the collaboration, Crumb learned to push his own art and pace himself with Charles as his brother's mental illness escalated.
The camera of cinematographer Maryse Alberti is especially well-suited to document a visual artist. Her live images augment the sketches Crumb draws during the documentary. The sequence on the streets in San Francisco, where Crumb began Zap Comix is masterful. Her juxtaposition of the hip beside the doomed catches the city in the act and reinforces many of Crumb's images.
Crumb's depiction of women is perhaps the most controversial issue surrounding him. Zwigoff gives the issue thurough and thoughtful screen time, interviewing both critics and the women in Crumb's life. Some women believe that Crumb's drawings of women with big hips and legs depict an image of women that has been ignored by many artists. Other women find the scenarios in which he places women hostile. The film validates both opinions.
When journalist Peggy Orenstein tells Crumb how frightened she felt as a girl of eleven when she found a sexually explicit a Zap Comix in her brother's room, Crumb--now a father of a daughter--nods and squirms. "I do this stuff, and then I'm horrified and embarrassed when I see it on the paper, and I say, "Oh, my God,' but somehow I can't stop doing it," Crumb says. "I have this hostility toward women," Crumb admits on camera. "Somehow revealing that truth about myself is helpful, but maybe I shouldn't be allowed to do it. Maybe I should be locked up and my pencils taken from me."
For viewers not familiar with the work of R. Crumb, Zwigoff makes no attempt to water down the most controversial comics, which makes the discussion of Crumb's sexism by critics compelling, but too little is said about the humiliating images of African-Americans. Crumb says that only white liberals complain about his racism. Perhaps. But it seems weak that a film relying on African-Americans Scott Joplin and Jelly Roll Morton for its sound track does not make a stronger investigation of the belittling images of the composers' race.
If Zwigoff holds back on the discussion of racism, it does not stop the the film from doing what R. Crumb says he would like his artwork to do: evoke intellectual curiosity.
A version of this review appears in Go Magazine.