There is a divide between the entirely arbitrary and subjective reactions of the casual viewer and the analytic appraisal of the trained critic. More often, we think of popcorn movies falling into this divide as films that the critics bash for sport. Crumb is of the other, rarer sort. It is a film that almost certainly will offend - annoy, at best - casual viewers, but will resonate with critics by virtue of its reflective nature.

Growing up as I did with comic book culture, Crumb was known to me by reputation long before I ever got even a glimpse of his work. By that time, of course, his underground comix had become an established counterculture niche that had transcended its original, subversive connotations and instead occupied a respected place in the artistic continuum (even if that place was on the fringe of the continuum).

Though the first Terry Zwigoff film I saw was Bad Santa, it was Ghost World that best prepared me for how this documentary would perceive its subject. In his 2010 essay for Criterion, Crumb Reconsidered, Jonathan Rosenbaum notes that "Zwigoff doesn’t avoid or shortchange any of the moral and political issues that Crumb’s work raises, including those involving sexism and racism, although he doesn’t pretend to settle any of them either." The issues raised and explored are where the film will lose casual viewers, but it's by refraining from passing judgment on them that it engages the critic.

Zwigoff made no bones about his bias as documentarian, having been a friend of Crumb's long before beginning the filming over a span of six years. Rather than give us a two-hour infomercial, though, Zwigoff acts as our inside man, ferreting out of Crumb and his brothers very candid discussions of a troubling nature. I was reminded at times of Wesley Willis' Joy Rides, particularly the sections in which the brothers discuss their youth and reveal their individual mental health issues.

Just as appalling as learning that their father broke Robert's collarbone at the age of five on Christmas is the on-camera remarks concerning Maxon's history of sexual assault. He recounts an incident in which he stalked a woman into a store, compelled to pull down her shorts. Robert laughs, but rather than a laugh of endorsement, it is as Rosenbaum characterizes it, one of disbelief. Robert laughs throughout the entire documentary, in fact, quite apparently in lieu of being able to articulate any other reaction to the depth of his and his family's dysfunction.

I wish the Crumb sisters had agreed to participate in the filming of the documentary. Whether their accounts would have alleviated or magnified some of the horror, it would at least have given a fuller context for understanding the prolific artist.

There is at least one glaring deficiency to Crumb from a critical perspective. Though there are differing views from women about Crumb's artistic portrayal of women in his work, the matter of race is not only given much less attention; it's discussed exclusively by white commentators. I could almost give Zwigoff a pass for relying on people close to Crumb if not for the fawning of critic/apologist Richard Hughes, whose relationship (if any) with Crumb is never established. Surely, there was at least one African-American critic or expert in some related field who could have been recruited to discuss Crumb's work.

I don't really know what to make of Crumb. I found myself far less interested in R. Crumb the artist than in the Crumb family. As a documentary, its unflinching look at such personal matters is compelling from start to finish. The content itself, though, elicits degrees of empathy and repulsion, and various reactions between. Crumb falls into that no man's land between subjective and critical, reminding me that I, too, am somewhere between casual viewer and critic.

Crumb entered my Flickchart at #604/1568