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Tarnation
(2004)
Dir: Jonathan Caouette
2004 has been a big year for the documentary, particularly the political doc or non-fiction film as it’s recently been dubbed, since in most cases there tends to be more tendentious manipulation than truthful documentation. I read just the other day that Harvey Weinstein and his pet turd Michael Moore are pushing for the Academy to allow Fahrenheit 9/11 consideration for best picture. Not to sound caustic, but you’d have to be a fucking asshole to seriously think that movie deserves even the slightest consideration for an Academy Award; the fact that it won the Palme D’Or at Cannes is enough of a cinematic slap in the face.
You might say that Tarnation, the debut feature by Jonathan Caouette, is the antithesis to a movie like Fahrenheit 9/11. Whereas Moore boils his film down to a level of cartoonish simplicity intended for mindless digestion by knee-jerk liberals (ie. G.W is a diabolical madman/anti-Christ bent on ruling the world), Tarnation presents one of the most complex mother-son relationships in the history of cinema. While Fahrenheit screams at the audience, everything about Tarnation is so quiet and gentle. There is no thesis to Caouette’s film, no ulterior motives to change the outcome of the election or stamp out terrorism; it’s simply a scrapbook of emotion so powerful in it’s simplicity as to be almost overwhelming.
At age 11, Jonathan grabbed a camera and began documenting his life, which consisted of physical and emotional abuse, suicide attempts, and a condition known as de-personalization. Caouette filmed everything from an absolutely creepy monologue he performed at age 11, in which he assumed the persona of a battered housewife, to his thoughts about growing up gay in 1980’s Texas with an absent mother and questionably unstable grandparents. Caouette’s mother, Renee – who was forced to undergo shock treatment therapy after falling off the roof of her house as a child – bounced back and forth between different mental hospitals during Jonathan’s childhood. The film is an attempt by Caouette, now 31, to come to terms with his mother’s condition and find some sort of peace with her.
So much has been made about the film’s ridiculously low budget that there’s no need to get into it here. Let’s just say it’s somewhere in the vicinity of what Mike and Harv spend on lunch at Arby’s (rumor has it motherfuckers can eat like 22 Big Montanas each. I mean seriously, have you seen the Big Montana? It’s comical – it’s a fucking clown sandwich.) Anyway, Tarnation isn’t groundbreaking simply because it was made for a couple hundred bucks on software that’s designed for editing together family vacation clips, but rather because it takes such a radically inventive approach to telling a story that, if presented in any other way, would be dismissed as self-indulgent and commiserative. Which, thinking about it the next day, may be how some people view it. And since the entire film is about the trouble and beauty of a boy and his mom, should you find yourself not caring about the boy and his mom, then you may not like the film. In fact, you may hate the film. But, if nothing else, it’s an honest film, and in a time when honesty seems to be about the least important aspect of a documentary, it comes as a much needed breath of fresh air.
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