In the making since the director was 11-years-old and completed on a reported budget of about 200 dollars, Jonathan Caouette's Tarnation is an experimental and self-reflective mix of documentary and fiction. Bringing together a collection of home movies, family photos, answering machine messages, reenactments and Caouette's video diary, the film attempts to delve into the filmmaker's experiences growing up queer with a schizophrenic mother and dealing with her 2003 lithium overdose, which
rendered her even more mentally unstable than before. After premiering at the 2003 New York Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, Tarnation screened as part of the Frontier program at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Matthew Tobey, Rovi
As performance art born of personal pain, "Tarnation" stares teary-eyed into how genetics, culture, environment and susceptibility conspire to trigger mental illness - a documentary more to be experienced than simply viewed.
Como toda confesión, en la que alguien desnuda su intimidad sin pudor para quien quiera escuchar, Tarnation es capaz de generar desde la fascinación curiosa hasta la incomodidad y el rechazo.
A little too self-indulgent at times to be considered a "documentary", but all in all a very creative and moving look at life.
Once you let go and just go along for the ride...you are off on a journey into the psyche of a family in turmoil.
It's not always an enjoyable journey, but it is one in which (after being
led through a gamut of emotions) you are ultimatley led back to the point of origin, which is love.
A great reminder of the fact that while we can not choose our families...we are (ultimatley) in control of just how much we allow them to adversely effect our lives as adults.
One of the tough questions that we all have to deal with at some point is: At what point do you let go of all of the negative family baggage (that we all carry to some extent) and decide to start living your own life and making decicions based on doing what is best (and most helathy) for you?
These are some of the hard choices in life and this film really makes you think about them.
May 27, 2008
Robert C
Super Reviewer
"Tarnation" is a documenary made by and about Jonathan Caouette. Its starting point is his mother's lithium overdose in 2001 and then reviews the facts of his mother's life, followed by his own, mostly through photographs, 8mm film, and odd film clips(It took me ten minutes to get the "Rosemary's Baby" reference but
still have no idea about "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.") as fed through and spit out by a computer. "Tarnation" is an exercise in amateur narcissism that only serves to make the viewer uncomfortable in a shared voyeurism. The only sequences of merit are when he explores his mother's mental illness and what it is to care for a mentally ill person.(How Caouette made it out of such a situation as a stable adult is only partially explained by his moving from Houston to New York.)
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