Review of Tarnation (2003) by Parker M — 07 Feb 2011

3.5 Stars out of 4.

Jonathan Caouette's Tarnation is a documentary told so incoherently, but it evokes so much. It hurdles past cliché and sanctimonious themes (that most filmmakers would reach out for) and pays heed to more humorous, but equally harrowing events of his 'tarnished' life.

Tarnation is another word for 'damnation' which means the passage through hell and boy, does Jonathan endure something very parallel to that. He was abused as a boy, put in foster homes, his mother Renee was put in jail, and his grandparents were not necessarily productive guardians. Jonathan is (rightly so) a disturbed boy, but very talented. Yes, this movie exemplifies much of that, but even deeper the documentary exhibits his incredible aptness as an actor.

Which is much of what the film is about: confessions, implicit ones. He holds the camera, self-referentially, acknowledging he is making a film because his life has been thoroughly unacknowledged. He tries to get his grandparents and mother to talk and express their thoughts and feelings but they have trouble doing so. Not because they are shy; they complain readily. It is just their inability to communicate when everybody is listening. That is the key to schizophrenia (I believe): you are well-aware of your identities, but am not coherent to others.

Jonathan is also openly gay. But he nicely avoids that personal way and makes it matter-of-fact. Who cares what his sexuality is? He is a credible person, who has rolled through the punches enough to be concerned about not who he is becoming but who he consists of. As a young boy, he would act as a distraught woman (rather brilliantly) and break down in a complete act, but quite convincingly. By the end, he is now in his late 20s and stares at a camera breaking down. Difference: this is reality now.

Tarnation was filmed using answering machine footage, Super-8 camera, VHS videotape, photographs, and it was edited on iMovie - a lousy system for me. I prefer the advanced Final Cut Pro. Jonathan proves that even free editing software and a diverse array of minimalistic footage can compose a documentary that demands more reactions than a film spawned from a 200 million dollar budget, with a plethora of CGI.

He cuts the film in an irrational arrangement of montage, which suggests that the aberrant American filmmaker Kenneth Anger, known for controversial experimental works, might be his muse. If you have seen the transgressive Scorpio Rising, Tarnation will remind you of it. It has flashes of images then unpredictably cuts to another shot, that is totally out of place. This is the way Jonathan sees the world.

He also refuses to do voiceover, which is not laziness but astuteness. Since the documentary ends up being much about him, a voiceover would be maudlin. Instead, he creates silence with subtitles to make us listen to other noises, that do not adhere to anything but making us wonder what the audio all means.

This is a challenging film. Jonathan uses even David Lynch tactics to embrace a world of surrealism embedded in reality. He even did a theatre production of Blue Velvet, told in very obscure fashion. With the exception of some draggy moments, where the lack of voiceover does hinder our guidance through the film, Jonathan still demands reactions from us. When we get to know his mother (which takes an hour, a little too long) she has an odd charm to her, but when she tells the story of a smashing pumpkin our admiration withers into terror.

Tarnation is a story of life. Jonathan was born in 1973 and the film released in 2003. This is, more or less, a thirty year tale of a boy acting, inquiring, and worrying about the stages of his life and others around him. His mother in particular. Jonathan is fascinating, but it is Renee who is the enigma in the riddle.