
My big Wednesday afternoon/evening post-work/post-wedding-bonanza plan was to catch Tarnation (which I have been dying to see!) and afterwards make some connections with my Icelandic heritage with artist Olafur Eliasson’s lecture at the Hirshhorn.
As I expected, Jonathan Caouette’s highly personal and revolutionary documentary blew me away! And I must say, after these intense weeks with my family, it was refreshing to get immersed in someone else’s folks and drama and realize that my own deal ain’t so screwed up.
Not that it could possibly come close to this saga...
Caouette and I are roughly the same age, and indeed many of the popular culture touchstones – music, television, the movies – that he refers to in his production, resonate with me. Especially as someone who also grew up in the world as a certain sort of “artistic” type, feeling more than a bit alienated from his environment. Believe me, I could totally relate to the evolution of "period" haircuts and fashion missteps. And also the visual and information frenzy and overload of the film, which in I guess in a sort of desperate idealization, reflects the more creative, energetic bent of my generation. Now, I always imagined Texas to be this creatively-stifling place to experience high school, but can you imagine Young Jonathan directed and publicly staged in the auditorium an interpretation of David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet” using lip-synched Marianne Faithful songs as the narrative? Ay… At my school, Jonathan would have been a great guy to have as a collaborator and friend.
As his mother and the poignant focal point of Tarnation, Renee LeBlanc, struggles to enunciate later in the film, the kid has got “chutzpah.”
And for whatever reason, Caoutte, is a natural-born performer and auteur. The filmmaker and subject is attractive and charming; he has no reservations, and is quite aggressive, about laying it all out for the world to see. Despite a tumultuous and unstable upbringing, by anyone’s standards, he nonetheless had access to audio/video recording equipment - Super-8, Betamax, VHS, Hi-8 and Mini-DV - and miraculously was able to preserve and hold on to all the documentation - photographs, home movies, audio recordings, video diaries, and answering machine messages-… to later be edited and spliced together, famously, on some kind of Apple home computer film editing software (total budget: $218.32) and fortuitously engaging the attention and support of obvious soul mates and sponsors (and eventual producers) John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig) and Gus Van Sant.- well, it must be some kind of divine pre-ordination. Young Jonathan’s early bedroom/bathroom video diaries/performances are uncanny and reveal a wise and frightful understanding and reflection of the grown-ups he might have faced in his foster home years.
His leisurely and unflinching video footage of his grandmother at her weaker and more candid moments reveal a prodigious documentary maker. I can’t imagine any family member or friend allowing a camera to record such private vulnerability – this goes beyond your conventional home movies, folks! Clearly a natural at his medium, Cauoutte, at a very young age, is able to disarm and capture on film the charming but difficult grandma Rosemary, struggling with her dentures and often seemingly drunk, and let it play out with a naturalness, sensitivity, and honesty that even the most seasoned of filmmakers could only aspire to. Maybe she realized one day she would become famous in his hands! (Which, I guess Rosemary is now – this property is hot!)
Caouette’s childhood and teenage years are massively messed-up but the kid nonetheless manages to find and develop his vocation and voice early, and after twenty-odd years of survival and documentation, the culmination is a most breathtaking and unflinching portrait of American life. A kind of US – ADD.
A synopsis of Tarnation, from the film’s press materials:
The film begins with the early history of Caouette’s family. His grandparents, Adolph and Rosemary, were married in 1951 and experienced a middle-class life in a Houston suburb. But their idyllic early years quickly disintegrate after they opt to incarcerate their beauty-queen daughter Renee, who undergoes shock therapy after a suspected mental
condition is diagnosed. Renee’s personality is severely compromised after two years of treatment, resulting in a tortured life of mental illness, physical abuse, and a seemingly endless series of hospitalizations. Her saving grace arrives in the form of her son,
Jonathan, born in 1972.
As Jonathan grows up on camera over a two-decade span, he forges an unbreakable, often heartbreaking bond with Renee, discovering along the way his own personal difficulty - depersonalization, an affliction involving feelings of detachment from one’s own body or thoughts. Using filmmaking and self-documentation as a means of escape and salvation, Jonathan eludes his harsh existence through the safe, controlled world of cinema and make-believe. He becomes enthralled with underground movies, musical theatre and alternative gay culture, and yearns for the day when he can escape Texas and make a life of his own. As a young adult Jonathan migrates to New York City and finds a secure, loving home with boyfriend David Sanin Paz. His relationship with Renee grows even deeper after a lithium overdose requires sacrifice, compassion and an outpouring of love.
Tonight over a quick “catch-up” phone conversation with my mother I was trying to brief Tarnation in a nutshell and recommend it. Admittedly there’s no way around selling this important film without a synopsis coming off as a downer. She’s more keen on Ray - apparently we have some family connection to the producer.
There’s this painfully awful, extended moment late in the film, when Cauoette records Renee, brain-damaged after a lithium overdose, riffing with a pumpkin, infantile, clearly deranged. And one thinks back to the earlier footage of her as an arresting dark beauty who could have gone wherever she wanted in this world after her flower-child phase. In another time or circumstance. But for a fall and a misdiagnosis and bad advice from a doctor Renee was given numerous shock treatment and multiple institution confinements. I somehow believe similar fates were not uncommon in my parent’s generation. Especially if one were a bit “different.”
The closing scene of Tarnation seemed a bit forced and not quite genuine to me, as if Jonathan Cauoette felt the need to wrap up things somewhat tidily and thematically as a documentary that has come full-circle (informed cineastes know he has already developed a follow-up documentary about his maybe (?) equally as complex grandfather Adolph). The audience is well-acquainted with his dramatic flair and when he expresses tearfully (in a familiar staging as his adolescent videos) that his big fear is that he will end up in a similar regressive mental state as his mother Renee, we’re like, “okay, now you’re pushing it.”
To me that sort of undermines what Cauoette has demonstrated throughout his elaborate and engaging presentation of his personal history; to audiences it is apparent that he has more than stepped up to the plate – and had to grow up - in taking care of his problematic family and has demonstrated that he is more than equipped to deal with life and is a genuine survivor (not to mention talent). And despite his miserable youth and “detachment disorder,” it is very well apparent that the filmmaker, given his sacrifices for his family, care for his mother, and the devotion of his long-term partner, knows how to love and is very much loved in return.
So, the film ran longer than I expected and the line for the lecture at the Hirshhorn was out of control so I missed the Olafur Eliasson talk. Which is sad since I’m a huge fan of his work, an art snob, and Icelandic. I did watch America’s Top Model where they went to Tokyo tonight and that was also some brilliantly marketed pop culture mess but I won’t get into that …