Tarnation

Amazon.com

A dark and troubling dream that David Lynch must envy, made all the more unsettling because it's true, Tarnation can only be called at auto-documentary. It's a self-portrait of the family life of Jonathan Caouette, whose mother Renee (a former child model) was forced to undergo electric shock treatment repeatedly in her youth, leading to erratic behavior throughout her life. But though the events of Caouette's life are sad, horrific, or a testament to human resilience, what makes the movie striking is how it was made: Caouette cobbled the movie together from photographs, tape recordings, and home movies that he's shot throughout his life, ranging from footage of himself at 11 years old imitating a battered wife to trashy horror movies he made as an adolescent to the first time he met his father. The unique and fluid result is mesmerizing and eerily intimate, like stepping into someone else's stream of consciousness--though few of our dreams have such a killer indie rock soundtrack. --Bret Fetzer

Description

DVD extras include: Director commentary, optional French subtitles, Photo Gallery. Jonathan Caouette's spellbinding debut film Tarnation re-imagines the whole idea of what a documentary can be. Having filmed his life since he was eleven years old, Caouette has woven together a psychedelic whirlwind of snapshots, super-8 home movies, answering machine messages, video diaries, early short films, snippets of '80s pop culture and dramatic re-enactments to create an epic portrait of an American family torn apart by dysfunction and reunited through the power of love. arnation begins in 2003 as Caouette learns of his mother's lithium overdose back in his native Texas. Faced with the haunting remnants of his past, including a family history of mental illness, abuse and neglect, Caouette returns home to aid in his mother's recovery. During this time, he rekindles a touching relationship with his mother, another victim of a tumultuous childhood and discovers that family ties are never truly unbound.

Customer Reviews:

transcending texas.......2007-01-25

"We're all just one happy family," insists grandfather Adolph, "and we all love God." How and why that tragic falsehood got perpetuated in his horribly dysfunctional family is the subject of Jonathan Caouette's intense, emotionally raw, and deeply sad autobiographical documentary. His mother Renee--for all her madness, mental illness, 200 shock therapy treatments as a child, drug abuse, rape, and over a hundred psychiatric hospitalizations from 1965 to 1999, knows better: "Screwed up parents raise screwed up kids. I just wanted to break the cycle." She did not and could not, and her son Jonathan, writer and director, has paid a horrible psychic price: ''I don't want to be like my mom," he frets in a final scene. But he repeated the past and more, including growing up gay in Texas, and developing a "depersonalization disorder" in which one views one's life in a detached, third person manner as if in a dream.

Caouette incorporates numerous media into his cinematic catharsis --super 8 home movies that he started taking when he was 11, still photos, phone messages, movie clips, tape recordings, and even simple text. He fires these at the viewer in a non-linear fashion and at a staccato pace, often filling split screens with dozens of overlapping frames. The disorienting effect mimics his life, and even draws the viewer into his own state of mind. Caouette is a gifted film maker. As a human being he gets high marks for sheer bravery for confronting his horrific past, and for his deep tenderness toward his deranged mother who came to live with him in New York City. No person should bear even a fraction of the curse that he inherited. Tarnation makes at least two claims to fame. It has won a place as one of the "Top Ten Films of the Year" on over 50 such lists, and was reputedly made for $218 on a Macintosh and edited with the bundled iMovie software.

A Personal Photo Album.......2007-01-21

"TARNATION"

A Personal Photo Album

Amos Lassen and Cinema Pride

"Tarnation" made for less than $3oo is an autobiographical documentary made by Jonathan Caouette. It is chaotic, it is blurry, it is weird but most of all it is real. It is also one of the most touching films I have ever seen. Caouette recorded\his family concentrating on the mistreatment of his mother and the impact it had on his own life He used old home movies and photographs to assemble a collage which documents his and his mother's lives. Some of this includes his mothers various stints at psychiatric hospitals and his own entrance into the world of underground filmmaking.
The style that we get both disquiets and disorients and is anarchistic. I am sure that not many have been able to sit through the entire film (although I did). The film is grainy and repeats itself several times. The director devised his own techniques and uses them over and over.
There is great material here for a film if it were given to the right person. One terrible thing after another seems to happen to him and his family.
The film does take shape and show prose when Caouette concentrates on his own gay life. His coming out story is interesting and his life as a gay male is fascinating. There are even parts of his familial life that are interesting to watch.
If you are able to sit through the entire movie, you will see something that will break your heart and your spirit. I only wish that the whole thing would have been more professional.

Very overrated, narcissitic, and self indulgent...........2006-07-28

I was immensely disappointed by this film. The "avant-garde" style of the film has been done better by other filmmakers (specifically Derek Jarman, Kenneth Anger, and Harmony Korine), and the film is mostly about Jonathan, not about his mother. The critics made this film sound like it was an attempt by Jonathan to bring him closer to his mother, to try and understand her by making a film about her, and to bring "closure" to their relationship. Well, the film isn't really about Jonathan's mother, it's strictly about him. We hear and see tons of information (with annoying title cards) about Jonathan's life, career, and loves. It feels like an episode of "this is Jonathan's life", as if Jonathan is this absolutely fascinating, brilliant individual that we must all pay attention to. He may become a great artist someday, but he isn't there yet. Jonathan uses his mother merely as an excuse to make a very self-indulgent, narcissitic film about himself. He doesn't really seem interested in her, other than as an excuse to show how much HE'S suffered, not really about her suffering. While Jonathan had a horrendous childhood, I felt very little sympathy towards him, as he is constantly mugging for the camera in a "feel sorry for me, I'm gay and my mother is insane" way. The man has been taping himself since he was in grammar school, so he's just a tad in love with himself, methinks. Harmony Korine's julien donkey-boy is a film that deals with a schizophernic, and it is much more interesting and artistic than this film (Korine's uncle is a schizophernic). Derek Jarman shot his films in multiple formats similar to this film, like 35mm, 16mm, video, and super8, and weaved the images into an artistic and fascinating tapestry. Kenneth Anger, as well as Jarman, infused a gay sensibility into their films, which Jonathan doesn't do very well. Overall, disappointing, considering critics said it was absolutely brilliant....

Enthralling, painful, profound, cathartic.......2006-06-15

Thoreau said "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." While this may be true of some, others are not so quiet. Caouette has unleashed a tidal wave of agony and angst, at times a shill scream of adolescent suffering, at other times a low moan of early adult-onset life affliction. Truly, many of us know the feeling of wanting to explode and fill the void with the screech of our own inner turmoils, but lack the voice, the means, the mechanisms. For want of a method we seeth silently, voiceless, castrated, invisible. We want to be known and loved and understood and instead we stammer and stutter and fall silent. We pack in our caring and seal our emotions and vulnerabilities behind high walls of rationality and apathy. Or we scribble in diaries or blogs and our hidden solitary torture goes wholly unnoticed.

Caouette has commendably captured in video and audio snippets, in stills and captions, a glimpse into the troubled past that haunts and harasses him. He has undertake a photo collage of his own life experience, himself as the subject matter and the material. I cannot know how much he left on the cutting room floor, what he felt necessary or desireable to expunge, but he seems to have faced it all with remarkable candor and vulnerability. He survived a rural Southern upbringing, a father-less household, poverty, a love of film, and homosexuality. To that potent melange, he added mental illness, abandonment, foster care, PCP, physical and sexual abuse.

I cannot say that I understand his life even after viewing it or that I can even relate to some of the events that shaped him. But through his art I feel that I can say I know a little of him and I can say that I empathize with his pain. I will never walk a mile in his shoes, but I don't think I have to in order to care about the tribulations and fate of another human being. It is his candor and vulnerability, his willingness to expose the deepest parts of his own psyche and say "Here I am, look at me." that makes me care about him. That gives me a reason to watch and wonder, How did he turn out? Seeing the first half of the project, one would be forgiven for thinking "This will end badly." That one of these stark text captions will announce his successful suicide and provide that closing parenthesis to his life: Jonathan Caouette (1975 - 200x). Ultimately, I think he redeemed himself and perhaps transcended his lot in life.

What I saw as the film continued was a man coming to terms with himself and his past. A man demonstrating that he is capable of finding love and connecting with others. A man who did not harbor resentments for the wrongs done to him and his mother, did not harbor a grudge toward his father or grandparents for abandonment or abuse. Rather, I saw a thoughtful, emotional, caring man, a creative artist, a loving partner and a devoted son. His journey is not yet complete, but as the film concluded, I felt a compassion and a sense of optimism, for not just Jonathan, but for all of us.

Good Movie, but DVD is FLAWED.......2006-05-22