Filial Devotion

On reflection, Jonathan Caouette's Tarnation might seem a questionable choice of movie for an emotionally-unstable gay man to go to with his mother, but nobody else wanted to see it, and it certainly helps put one's own instabilities into perspective. It's a bit hard going, self-consciously avant-garde without a sufficient breadth of avant-garde tropes to draw on, and relentlessly narcissistic, but I still rather liked it; unlike my mother.

Lesley found the whole thing limited and repetitive, which it certainly is, and also callous, which I think it isn't. She was led astray, perhaps, by all the publicity suggesting the film is about Caouette's mother Renee, when it is quite clearly never about anything other than Jonathan himself. He puts his extremely photogenic self onscreen a lot, sometimes painfully and unflinchingly, but always deliberately. Everyone else -- his mother, grandparents, boyfriends, long-lost father -- is present as an adjunct to that, interrogated and preyed upon by his all-consuming exhibitionism. It's all artifice.

It's like the ultimate blog.

Taken on those terms, Tarnation isn't a bad film. It's at its most harrowing early on, when Jonathan is too young to be much of a presence and the monstrous "therapies" given to Renee are grimly deadpanned; and towards the end, when the restless editing pauses for a merciless take of Renee's mania. It's technically accomplished -- who'd have guessed anyone could do so much with iMovie? -- and while it doesn't really break new ground artistically, it does provide an uneasy window onto the lives of some terribly damaged people, which can only be a good thing.

Damaged people are where it's at, kids, and I'm afraid they (we) always will be.

Meanwhile, though he has undeniable cinematic talent, it's hard to see where Caouette can go from here. I would love to live in a world where he was called on to make the next James Bond film, or maybe Star Wars Episode VII: Rebirth of the Sith, but that seems pretty unlikely.

Then again, Peter Jackson wound up making Lord of the Rings, so who the hell knows?
Posted by matt at April 24, 2005 11:47 PM