TARNATION A
USA (105 mi) 2003 d: Jonathan Caouette
USA (105 mi) 2003 d: Jonathan Caouette
What─documentaries never looked like this before? Perhaps, for some, this style is not
sufficiently underground, and for others, too stylistically exaggerated, as the
film just doesn’t fit into the accepted genre of today’s films. As a result, it’s not getting the kind of
public response it deserves, as it’s being relegated to small, unattended
theaters. At least that’s the response
here in Chicago, playing only in the small theater at the Music Box, it may as
well have been given the kiss of death, which is a shame, as this is a
radically different work that breaks the mold on what a documentary film should
look like, which deserves be seen on large screens. Instead it’s getting labeled as a gay film by
some, ridiculed by others for being too self-indulgent, too much about one guy
and his family, using home movies for Christ’s sake, so why is it relevant to
me? But the boldness of style here takes
one’s breath away. Despite its
avant-garde reputation, this is one of the most tender, unapologetically unique
films about love and self-affirmation that you’ll ever see.
What seems to be overlooked in evaluating this film is that
it is, ultimately, a transforming love story through art. And it is an opening for the viewers to
question our own abilities to accept, as one of us, the mentally
challenged. The mentally ill are all too
often relegated to the back rooms somewhere, out of sight, out of mind. Here, Caouette has the courage to place his
mother Renee LeBlanc front and center, showing us the woman he loves, Tarnation - Naked As We
Came by Iron And Wine YouTube (2:37).
And brain damaged as she is, if he’s not ashamed of her, then why should
we be of anyone who is similarly afflicted?
If we’re ever to bridge the gaps of intolerance, doesn’t it begin within
our own dysfunctional families? That is
the ultimate challenge of the film.
What immediately stands out is what a beautifully
structured, heartfelt, and eye-opening film this is, using a highly
confessional, experimental, style that is punctuated by neverending streams of
light, making incredible use of color, narration, editing, and very soft,
intimate music that offers the viewer a glimpse of how Caouette feels about the
various stages of his life, becoming an excruciatingly personal,
autobiographical coming-of-age film, where he is credited as
actor/writer/editor/producer/and director.
Initially put together for $218 using iMovie, Apple’s DV editing
program, Caouette combines hyper-expressive film elements from his own family
history, particularly his mother, who lost the use of her legs after a fall
from the roof of her house, later diagnosed with a dead nerve, regaining her
ability to walk, but at the time she received electric shock treatment, twice a
week for two years, emerging with bipolar and schizo-affective disorders, where
for the next 35 years Renee would be institutionalized more than 100 times, Diviner
Sequence from Tarnation - Music by HEX, Steve Kilbey and Donnette Thayer
YouTube (3:47). During a distressing bus
ride across the country, she suffered a psychotic episode in Chicago where
Jonathan witnessed his mother’s rape at the age of 5. One of the more traumatic moments at the
center of the film is awaiting her recovery from a lithium overdose. Nonetheless, the brutal harshness of these
memories is contrasted by early photographs when she worked as a model, using a
recurring theme of beauty and joy, which is how he continues to think of her
even now.
Caouette blends parallel images of his own adolescent
development, including his experience with abusive foster parents mixed with
attention grabbing drug use and suicide attempts, acting out imaginary
characters of his own creation, seen here at age 11 tarnation
YouTube in English with French subtitles (2:53), his discovery that he is gay growing up
in Houston, masquerading as an older goth girl to get into gay clubs, set to
the music of the Cocteau Twins "Ice Pulse" TARNATION -clip de la
vida de jonathan caouette YouTube
in English with Spanish subtitles (3:20), much of which has the feel of low-grade horror
films, his first boyfriend, also unusually creative spurts, such as starring in
his own horror films or directing his own high school musical production of
David Lynch’s BLUE VELVET (1986), lip-synching to the music of Marianne
Faithfull. There is an especially moving
sequence of meeting and discovering his true love in New York, which is
accentuated by the Magnetic Fields song “Strange Powers,” Strange Powers - YouTube
(2:37), which feels so hopeful and optimistic, not in a dreamy sense, but
realistically. With much of the film
shot in his own apartment, we see film posters of Fassbinder’s QUERELLE (1982),
or Kubrick’s THE SHINING (1980), along with other artworks hanging on the
wall. Of noticeable interest is how
effortlessly the filmmaker expresses the fact that he’s gay, so matter of
factly. It is the one aspect of his life
that has not been tarnished, where he feels comfortable and relaxed about
himself. This is easily the healthiest
aspect of his life. What’s more unsettling
is the front and center staging of some of the more incoherent and unglamorous
sides of his mother, turning so much of the spotlight on her that many viewers
come unhinged and start calling it exploitive.
However, as this film is largely a valentine “to” his mother, then
showing us who she is, in totality, is showing us who he loves.
Again, every color has been overly saturated, images
stretched and reformulated to create new art forms, all blended together with
an intensely personal 3rd person narration that is unspoken, but is instead
read like subtitles on the screen, using such eloquently simplistic methods to
allow a distance, a detachment in describing tortuous realities that have an
inner life of their own, eating and gnawing at him, even entering his dreams,
but which drives him to create a stunningly unique work, a transforming
artistic experience. While Caouette’s
experimental style is not completely new, certainly underground filmmakers from
Andy Warhol to Stan Brakhage have devised similar looking films, but his use of
such a gorgeously compelling experimental style as a cathartic means of
excoriating such intensely personal and very real demons from his life in order
to create a sense of being normal does seem revelatory.
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