Tarnation
Wellspring Video VHS & DVD
1 hr 28 mins
Director: Jonathan Caouette
Haunting in its imagery, somewhat ignoble in its execution, Johnathan Caouette’s “Tarnation” was one of 2004’s most mysterious and unnerving films to have emerged from the Sundance film festival. It is haunting because of its phantasmagoric execution, utilizing split screens, psychedelic imagery and a moody soundtrack (that, in rights, cost more than the film to make). It is shameful self-flagellation, however, because it is an expressionist chronicle about its creator, whose crusade for his mother’s mental health comes across as sneakily self-absorbed. It also has the aforementioned notoriety of being assembled for about $200, utilizing Apple’s “iMovie” software and about 30 years of photographs, home films and vide’s that construct its inky plasma.
Caouette begins “Tarnation” with the simple title “Once upon a time…” to indicate that this is his fantasy to cope with a painful reality. He starts, as with all good stories, at the beginning: introducing his mother and his grandparents to us through old photographs and title cards that smack of tender facetiousness. His mother Renee is presented as a youthful all-American princess who was a child model by 12. It all changed, however, when she fell off the roof in a childish stunt and went into a coma only to reemerge with a supposed personality shift. Given the mental health techniques of the day, Jonathan documents his mother’s supplication at the hands of treatments like shock therapy and prescription drugs that beat her into submission, all condoned by her parents.
Where “Tarnation” becomes uniquely absorbing is when Jonathan turns the camera onto himself. He is shown as a precocious boy whose gift of a camcorder turns out to be his biggest outlet in a childhood filled with foster parents, molestation and frequent separations from Renee, whose regularities at hospital condemn her to a type of teenage emotional state. Jonathan, in one harrowing scene at age 13, dons makeup and wig and acts out an elaborate soliloquy for the camera in the guise of a Scarlett O’Hara cum-Madonna. It is here that Jonathan really takes over as the film’s centerpiece, with images of his troubled teenage life and different guises unfolding like a cancerous flower.
As a film, “Tarnation” would have been a noble but banal production if it weren’t for Jonathan Coauette’s very loud entrance as a gifted filmmaker new to the scene. In fact, from his lyrical images and fluid construction, “Tarnation” really chronicles the metamorphosis of a talented artist whose only muse seems to have been his family. However, this is the dilemma: “Tarnation” is not a documentary per se as more a tweaked romanticism of his past filtered through the midnight movies and underground culture that Jonathan Coauette loves. It is his suffering made beautiful by the camera, and only when reality seeps in (especially in scenes where is grandfather is present) does his world implode. We are seduced by “Tarnation” but never convinced of its credulity.
–Joe Ramirez
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