Revisit:
Crumb
Dir: Terry Zwigoff
1995
Revisit is a series of reviews highlighting past releases that now deserve a second look.
It is hard to believe that Crumb, Terry Zwigoff’s breakthrough documentary about comic book great Robert Crumb, has been out for 15 years. Though Crumb made a triumphant, unexpected return last year with his illustrated version of The Book of Genesis, the notoriously shy artist’s star has never been as visible as it was in 1995 when Zwigoff’s documentary took home the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.
Director Zwigoff had been a friend of Robert Crumb for years, sharing a similar obsession with old blues 78 rpm records and playing in a band with the artist. Zwigoff spent nine years filming and editing the footage that would eventually become Crumb. If there is any sort of narrative running through the film, it is following the preparations of Crumb and his family to flee California for a new home in France. As we watch the Crumbs slowly extricate themselves from the United States, Zwigoff weaves in footage of the artist’s dysfunctional upbringing and the drawings that stemmed from it, leading Time art critic Robert Hughes to call him the “Brueghel of the last half of the twentieth century.”
But while the film, recently re-released on DVD by the Criterion Collection, focuses on Robert Crumb and his unusual brand of comics that are both funny and repulsive, Crumb gives almost equal focuses to older brother Charles, an artist in his own right that became a drug-addicted recluse, spending his adult years living with his mother before committing suicide in 1992.
When writing about the film, critic Roger Ebert said, “Among documentaries about artists, Crumb is unusual in having access to the key players and biographical artifacts of Crumb’s entire life.” And this is quite true. Zwigoff is not only given unrestricted access to Crumb himself, but most of his family (two sisters refused to participate) and locations that figured prominently in his art. Most important of all is Charles who, according to Robert, became so obsessed with comics as a child that he conscripted the entire family into drawing them. But while Robert found drawing comics to be a lucrative outlet for battling his inner demons and hang-ups, Charles went further and further off the deep end, eventually filling entire notebooks with tiny scribbles. In his interviews, Charles is both articulate and self-deprecating, but it doesn’t take a shrink to see the heavy psychological damage behind his eyes. But the key rests in why Charles forced Robert and their brother Maxon to draw comics. He used them as a means of escape from a violent-tempered father and amphetamine-addicted mother. But beyond that, these comics created a fantasy world where he could milk a boyhood attraction to Treasure Island star Bobby Driscoll.
Sexual dysfunction is all over Crumb. Many of Robert’s most famous drawings involve monstrous bird-headed women with large asses and breasts or little men diving into a woman’s nether regions and emerging from her mouth. Zwigoff brings in numerous critics, from former Mother Jones editor Deidre English and cartoonist Trina Roberts, to discuss some of Robert’s more controversial works that have been decried as either racist or misogynistic. But putting these depraved scenes that race through his mind on paper is important to Robert. “If I don’t draw for a while, I get really crazy, depressed and suicidal,” Crumb says at the beginning of the film. Rather than condemn Robert for the horrible things he draws, Zwigoff leaves judgment up to the audience. Even English does not damn Crumb for his portrayal of women as commodities. Instead, she just is sad for him.
More than anything else, Crumb depicts a family haunted by a life of pain using the medium of art to reconcile those demons. While each of the three brothers speak in rational tones, you cannot deny the fetishes, attitudes and actions of the trio come from a place of deep hurt. It is rare to see any film reach so deeply, so unafraid into the human experience. It’s a harrowing, but worthwhile experience.
by David Harris
