|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| TARNATION Carol Hartsell
Caouette’s mother, Renee LeBlanc, subjected to years of shock therapy, has spent most of her life in and out of psychiatric institutions. During his early childhood, Jonathan was shuffled to one abusive foster home after another until finally being adopted by his grandparents, a loving if eccentric couple riddled with their own feelings of guilt and denial over the illness and perhaps misdiagnosis of their daughter. The combination of painful and unmoored formative years, an early awareness of his own homosexuality and parental figures out of arm’s reach (Jonathan’s father was gone before he even found out that Renee was pregnant) left young Jonathan with a lot to work through on his own. With an ever-present video camera on hand to document, he began using dramatic monologues and confessionals as vehicles for excising his internal rage, angst and curiosity. One particularly stunning video shows 11-year-old Jonathan in drag, playing the role of a battered housewife who has just murdered her husband.
But what ultimately makes Tarnation different from other documentaries is it’s formal elements and method of construction. Caouette edited the story in the same way he might have made an abstract painting about it. Editing by music, allowing emotional cues to tell him what images to place alongside each other, following a more free associative logic for all the disparate elements, imbues each frame with a hand-made quality, as though this is the only print of the film ever made.
|
Earlier Reviews:
|
|
©
2003-2006 Drink at Work Ventures, All rights reserved. |
||
Tarnation,
an autobiographical documentary by Jonathan Caouette, is a collage of
video, music, photography and words that in less skilled — and less
earnest — hands could have amounted to nothing more than an amateurish
exercise in solipsism. But Caouette has taken all of the anger, pain and
confusion of his life thus far and, without compromise or hyperbole, created
a stunning work art about embracing what remains after years of suffering.
All
of this would be unbearable if it were played merely as a voyeuristic
look at the unraveling of a depressed and disillusioned preteen. But Caouette’s
motive is far from exploitation. His goal is not to provoke those who
had it easier or indict the foster care system, the medical health profession
or even the patriarchal, masculine society that leads to the marginalization
of women and homosexuals. Caouette isn’t putting his family on display
for the purpose of making the viewer pity him or his mother. His story
is about perseverance, redemption and the power of love. His endgame is,
ultimately, most compelling in how wholesome it is. A fair amount of screen
time is given to the joyful moments Caouette spends with the love of his
life, David. We see him made stronger by this relationship and given a
sense of purpose he didn’t have before. When Renee suffers from
a Lithium overdose, Caouette returns home to Texas, nurses his mother
back to health and takes her to live with he and David in New York. They
are a family; one that faced and conquered incredible odds in order to
become so.
Tarnation
is filled with love stories: the love story of Caouette’s grandparents,
the brief love story of Renee and Steve, the love story of Caouette and
David and the singular love story of a mother and son, who can at turns
comfort and terrify each other like no one else. Jonathan Caouette doesn't
want to turn out like his mother, but he knows he would not be the person
he is — with the courage, audacity, humility and love that he has
— without the dark, winding threads her life has weaved in his head.
In
the end, when the adult Caouette addresses the camera in an homage to
his childhood videos, we feel he is speaking directly to us as he might
a trusted friend. As he tells us, “I love my mother so much. I can’t
escape her,” we are humbled by his candor and conflict. To call
Tarnation exploitive or egocentric — as some most assuredly
will — would not only be shortsighted and wrong, it would be borderline
inhumane. Tarnation is a film about pain and confusion that ends
on a note of promise, love and hope. It is an exhilarating journey and
the herald of a new, important voice in cinema.