MOVIE REVIEW: Crumb

Robert Crumb is an underground comic book artist known for making strips based on his personal life and feelings, including his sexual proclivities. And boy does he have a lot of sexual proclivities. According to an ex girlfriend interviewed for the film their sex life involved less conventional sex and more wrestling and piggy back rides. In fact hearing Crumb talk about his sex life is a huge part of this film, because the film looks to figure out “Who is Robert Crumb?” The answer, as can be expected, is complicated.

It is made even more complicated by the fact that “Robert Crumb” is just as much of a myth or a persona as a real flesh and blood person. The opening shot pans across examples of Crumb’s work before settling on the man himself, huddled up and listening to an old record. There are a few times in film where someone asks “What are you getting at with your work?” or some other similar question, and the answer Crumb gives is always “I don’t know.” People seem to read more into him than might be appropriate, or so the film implies when it shows an art gallery that is having an exhibit on Crumb. One art critic calls him the “Brueghel of the last half of the century.” I’m not sure Crumb would agree.

One way the film tries to find out who Crumb is is by interviewing his brothers. Crumb comes out looking normal by comparison. One brother, Charles, lives with their mother and had a sexual attraction to the boy from Treasure Island. The other, Max, pulls women’s pants down for fun. Both, like their brother, are very open about themselves. It seems to run in the family. It’s almost as if they think themselves so uninteresting that they’re willing to admit anything. Charles talks about a time when he was seriously contemplating killing Robert with a butcher knife, but they both laugh. In the end, this does little to shed light on who Crumb is besides putting it in context. He had a strange childhood, that’s all that can be said.

One part of Crumb’s childhood that was out of the ordinary was his creation, along with his brother, of comic books. They show some of them in the film and they are of professional quality. This became Crumb’s training ground and he hasn’t stopped since. The man is constantly drawing, and what he draws ranges from people on the street, to mental patients to weird images taken straight from his psyche. The film does a good job of showing some of his best work, though “best” might be a strange word considering how gruesome some of it is. The man is a talent beyond most, that much is made clear.

But is that all he is? That might be the main take away from the film, not because the filmmakers suggest that, but more because that’s how Crumb might want to be seen: as a man who just draws comics. To quote the genius himself: “I just like to draw, it’s a deeply ingrained habit.”

4/5 You better have a thick skin for this one, Robert Crumb can be very offensive, as many would if they bared their psyche to the world.