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There aren’t many films in which Marilyn Monroe stars with James Dean, Charlie Chaplin and The Pope, and after this one there may never be another. In this movie, they –  or more accurately, their impersonators – all live together somewhat jaggedly on an island. 

It makes a little more sense when you understand Korine’s life at the time. Mr. Lonely was made after a decade away from the director’s chair and from his life as an enfant-terrible, a break that involved spending time in the Panamanian jungles with his nomadic parents; allegedly befriending a cult of fishermen, who were seeking fish with golden scales; and, as he told the New York Times, “rotting from the inside out” in Paris. 

This is the city that starts his film, as protagonist ‘Michael Jackson’ (Diego Luna) dances for a few Euros and entertains old folks at a home before meeting a Marilyn Monroe lookalike (Samantha Morton). She invites him to a Scottish island, where she lives with her ‘Charlie Chaplin’ husband in a commune that also includes James Dean, Abraham Lincoln, the Pope and Queen Elizabeth II. The impersonators are all plainly dissatisfied with who they are inside, latching on to the glamour of their idols to bridge their personal charm chasms. Marilyn tells Michael that the commune is a place “where everyone is famous and no-one gets old.” The focus of their cooperative is to build a stage and perform a show for the locals. When the reality of death intrudes on their make-believe idyll, the film turns darker, revealing more of who the islanders are on the inside. 

There is a separate thread of miracle-obsessed flying nuns, which seems quite disconnected from the main plot. It breaks up the main story, which drags its feet in the middle, but adds no great value to the film. In one sequence, where a nun cycles in free-fall, a voiceover proclaims, “If you believe, you will fly; God will be your parachute.” As the film’s end questions this, it also dashes the idea that Korine is exploring the concept of freedom in believing, unless he is conveying that you should only believe in who you are, implying that God may be a crutch in the way that the impersonators use their stolen identity as one. 

There is a point at which a drunken ‘Pope’ raises his glass “to the dreams that propel us, to the dreams that keep us well and … the dreams that unite us here.”  Maybe a disillusioned Korine, having had his dreams broken and wondering where he was going, was exploring his own identity in this project. 

The intrigue of this film’s premise promises more than the slightly rambling work itself delivers. Viewers who want a straight story may feel deflated, but those looking for deeper meanings have some material to work with. 

Derek Walker