TARNATION
Directed, Written, Director of Photography, Edited & Music by:
Jonathan Caouette.
Produced by: Stephen Winter.
Released by: Wellspring.
Country of Origin: USA. 88 min. Not Rated.

The story of Jonathan Caouette’s family is a genuine tragedy. Caouette, an openly gay New York actor, has made a documentary about his severely dysfunctional Texas clan. His mother, a one-time model, experienced severe mental health problems, which may have been worsened by ill-advised shock therapy treatments. Caouette's grandparents recommended these treatments because they felt their daughter was suffering from psychosomatic pain.

Caouette's father departed from the scene before his birth. His mother's emotional instability put both her and her baby son in genuine peril, and at one point they were stranded without money in Chicago. She was eventually hospitalized, and the boy was bounced around the foster care system until his grandparents were able to adopt him. His mother never fully regained her emotional stability and mental health.

Clearly there is an American gothic tale here, but Tarnation falls prey to the filmmaker's desire to pay endless self-tribute. The film begins with a patently staged depiction of his domestic life: a Brooklyn apartment he shares with his boyfriend and their dog. Caouette supposedly receives a phone call from a Texas hospital. His mother has overdosed on lithium, and he reacts with a series of exaggerated facial expressions for the camera. He then grabs a bus to Texas, carefully propping his video camera on his lap to ensure we see him looking pensively out of the window.

The film then spirals recklessly into a kaleidoscope of family photographs (often multiplied into pop art infinity), audiotapes recorded in his childhood, and tedious home videos. We see an 11-year-old Caouette vamping it up for the camera, complete with bleached blonde hair and make-up, performing a monologue about a Southern woman escaping an abusive relationship. Hey, it's not every 11-year-old boy who wants to grow up to be Ellen Burstyn. There are also clips of Caouette's amateur films, which he made as a teen. He claims inspiration from underground cinema, but these clips look more like the slasher thrillers of the ‘80s rather than the best of Stan Brakhage or Kenneth Anger.

Instead of telling a coherent story, Caouette resorts to padding the film with footage from campy TV shows and films of the ‘70s and early ‘80s. In a way, that is a blessing - it is much more fun to see clips of clunky kiddie musical numbers from Zoom! or Dolly Parton wiggling through The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas than to be audience to Caouette mugging and posing for the camera.

But despite the excess of Caouette, his story has gaping holes which are left unexplained. Why did his parents' marriage abruptly fail? Caouette alludes to being abused while in foster care, but where were his grandparents during this time? If they were mounting a legal effort to gain custody, why didn't Caouette mention this? What is revealed is not through the footage but the intertitles.

Much has been made of the claim that Caouette put Tarnation together on a $219 budget using iMovie software. That sum is blatantly bogus, and it was later acknowledged by the filmmaker that clearing the rights to old movies and music ran the film into the six-digit range. Gus Van Sant and John Cameron Mitchell share executive producer credits here - so much for Caouette's home moviemaking. Phil Hall
October 6, 2004