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Uncomfortably Numb
Is $218 doco Tarnation an exercise in narcissism or a tragic real life masterpiece?
BY DYLAN BEHAN.
Part video confessional, part real life nightmare - Tarnation is one of those moving personal documentaries, which thanks to affordable digital technology, has a level of personal intimacy never before seen in movies. And a visual creatively bound to induce headaches. Spanning 20 years, Texan-raised director Jonathon Caouette has edited home movie footage, audio recordings and photos to create a harsh psychedelic music video-styled autobiography, at the centre of which is a loving portrait of his mentally ill mother, his own displays of self-destructive youth, and the never-ending search for the truth about his family's past. That's the best way I can sum it up, and it still doesn't balance how annoyingly indulgent yet heartbreakingly brilliant it is. Caouette edited the film on his I-Mac in his spare time (supposedly for a budget of $218), and says making the film was only personally cathartic, but also potentially life saving.
Steadfastly anti-commercial (reality TV is "manipulative, abusive, bizarre and depressing" he says), Caouette is now a New York actor who's found a home in the musicals he enjoyed in his youth. Inspired by the DIY ethics of the New York arts scene, it's one of those rare moments when a lone underground voice manages to outshine the pre-conceived mainstream ways of presenting things. Although he never expected the film to find an audience outside of the New York experimental film scene, he had a very predetermined idea of what he wanted from the film personally.
"With Tarnation, I was trying to evoke memories of that place we go to when between sleep but not quite awake. When all of these images and emotions come bleeding through your mind's eye succumbing to a quick little spiritual epiphany but then its gone... I would love for people to go see it with their mind's free of preconceived notions. Just feel it and enjoy it."
It's been an amazingly cathartic journey for the director, as can be seen by the film's scenes where he interviews his mother and his grandfather, trying to get to the truth about his family's past. So cathartic in fact, he's stopped filming his family and definitely isn't planning a sequel.
"That catharsis has continued for the last 2 years showing it at festivals and in theatres around the world and talking about it and meeting people who have been moved by it. That's the best part, having women and men and people of all ages and backgrounds around the world, come up to me after screenings and just embrace me and begin these dialogues about their families and experiences and emotions and so on."
But he adds, the movie has changed his nightmarish world into a dreamy success, something he's still coming to terms with "I'm still just so blown away by everything that's happened its hard to decide exactly what I'm going to do next. I want to spend more time with my boyfriend but its all good. I'm always pinching myself and expecting to wake up."
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Directors David Cronenberg Miranda July Walter Salles Guillermo Del Toro American Splendor Morgan Spurlock Tarnation's Jonathon Caouette What The Bleep...
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"Filming things throughout my crazy life provided me with an escape but it really only helped save me from ending up dead in a gutter somewhere... As for my past and my mother (as) well, I'm a truth junkie... The bottom line is, I didn't want Tarnation to be sugar-coated and whitewashed like most Hollywood movies are with mental illness issues."