Tarnation
Directed by Jonathan Caouette
Wellspring
IT IS HARROWING to watch, but Jonathan Caouette’s Tarnation is a stunning, one-of-a-kind achievement. Screened at Cannes and around the world, Tarnation was made for a couple hundred bucks using iMovie. But that’s the least interesting thing about it.
Caouette has recorded his life since he was about ten years old, and he condenses it all, with careful editing and marvelous imagination, into this cinematic memoir. To say that Caouette’s childhood and adolescence were filled with pain would be an understatement. His mother, Renee LeBlanc, is the focus of the film and of Caouette’s life. After a promising start as a child model in the Houston area, Renee had an accident, the details of which are unclear, that changed everything and led to years of instability and institutionalization. Part of her “treatment” involved hundreds of doses of electroshock therapy. Not surprisingly, Renee’s early marriage failed quickly, and she proved unable to care for her young son. He was then brought up by his maternal grandparents, Adolph and Rosemary Davis, who are also very present, often disturbingly so, in the film. They seem to love and take good care of Jonathan, but their treatment of Renee in her childhood remains a mystery. The film opens with a re-enactment of Jonathan at home in New York with his boyfriend David. News of Renee’s lithium overdose sets up the narrative, which is a kind of search and rescue of his mother. The film goes back to Jonathan’s childhood, using haunting images and perfect music to provide the context for what we see throughout the film. This is a family in crisis, and the boy’s relationship with his video camera is perhaps the only constant in his life. The camera is his companion; it’s also his confessor, therapist, and co-conspirator. The queer kid that Jonathan was is present throughout his story. There are two unforgettable scenes and one beautiful image that hold Tarnation together. Early on, there is a long scene in which the young Jonathan, at about eleven, films himself secretly playacting. He portrays a female character he’s seen on TV (it’s obviously a version of Renee), an abused wife who is perhaps going to kill her husband or be killed by him. The image is shocking in its intensity, and the boy/woman is hypnotizing to watch as he frantically gesticulates, compulsively touching his hair. The other scene, occurring about an hour into the film, shows Renee in the present day, back in Texas and living with the widowed Adolph. Mugging for the camera, Renee picks up a small pumpkin and begins to dance and improvise a little song. The scene seems to go on forever, forcing us to witness the aftereffects of Renee’s catastrophic life story. Meanwhile, Adolph, seemingly oblivious, sits at a table in the back corner of the room, a room filled with a doll collection reminiscent of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. Caouette is right not to have shortened this scene; it documents Renee’s mental state, demonstrating how damaged she is. The film’s one truly beautiful image has the feel of a happy accident, a story that Caouette got on tape years earlier, having no idea it would be the thread holding the film together. Adolph, who otherwise only talks about the weather, tells a story of the small indentation between the upper lip and the nose (the philtrum), which he says is formed when an angel touches a baby before it’s born, rendering the baby silent about the secrets of heaven during its life on earth. The story and the image are the pure sweetness in the movie, other than some nice moments with Jonathan and his boyfriend David. Tarnation has an authenticity that’s unique unto itself. In an era of reality television, the film exposes the vast gap between such “reality” and what is real in the world. Caouette’s camera is invasive and relentless. Finally, just before the end of the film, he finds himself unable to tape a scene of himself talking to the camera in the bathroom, which was the only place he could find privacy. But Renee’s presence finally overwhelms her son, who stops taping, saying that he just can’t do it any longer. Jonathan Caouette has made the film that only he could have made. It is a search for sanity, an homage to family, and a testimony to survival. “Tarnation” means damnation in southern English, but this film shows that salvation is still possible, no matter how unlikely it might seem.
He takes us through his adolescence, when he got involved in the punk/gay/drag culture in Houston, sometimes sneaking into bars in disguise as a “goth girl.” His newfound friends, mentors, and lovers teach him a lot about life. This part of the story feels a bit like the world of Jennie Livingston’s Paris is Burning, but Caouette’s story is his own, not that of a filmmaker coming in to tell someone else’s story. This environment is where Jonathan first learned about underground filmmaking, and Tarnation includes some clips from his earliest movies. Images from popular culture during Caouette’s “formative” years —from Rosemary’s Baby, Carrie, or The Rocky Horror Picture Show—are interspersed throughout the film, providing context and bringing viewers into this highly personal story.
