Director: Jonathan Caouette
Starring: Jonathan Caouette, Renee LeBlanc, David Sanin Paz, Rosemary Davis, Adolph Davis

- Reviewed by Vickie

I don't think I've ever seen a documentary as stylistically unique or emotionally raw as Tarnation, writer-director Jonathan Caouette's look at his mother Renee LeBlanc's battle with mental illness. Despite the fact that it's not an easy film to watch, and at times I felt like I shouldn't be watching things that were obviously incredibly painful or personal for the parties involved, it's a fantastic artistic achievement.

Executive produced by indie darlings Gus Van Sant and John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch), who saw an early cut of the film and jumped onboard, Tarnation is like the acid-laced love child of a music video and a home movie. Images flash past at rapid-fire speed, or burn away altogether. Super-8 fades into black-and-white photographs. Onscreen text provides the narration. Time loops in on itself. It's actually kind of trippy. Pieced together from Caouette's family movies, photos, audio recordings and even answering-machine messages, as well as present-day tapings and interviews, the film examines how a single event changed his mother's life forever and, in turn, dramatically affected his own upbringing.

After a fall from a roof, a young Renee (a former model) experienced a personality shift. Her doctors recommended shock-therapy treatment, and her parents complied. That set off decades of, what the film explains, was later deemed misdiagnoses as Renee tries to hang onto her sanity while going in and out of dozens of psychiatric hospitals. Caouette chronicles his own life in parallel to that of his mother (who lost custody of her son as a result of her mental instability), and how he battled his own inner demons, and ends the film in present day, as the repercussions of the past are visited upon the present.

It's really hard to encapsulate all that Tarnation entails, and even harder to articulate what an emotionally draining experience it is to watch. Bad things happen over and over and over again, to greater tragic degrees, as the film unspools but, thankfully, it never feels exploitative. I cried more than once (and was almost reduced to those ugly cries Oprah hates), mainly because the pain of what's onscreen is so tangible, so real and so well-communicated in such a beautifully unorthodox fashion. It's tragedy and redemption and forgiveness and resentment and healing all at once, in a courageous, first-person cinematic package created by someone who's clearly an artist to the core.

Agree? Disagree? Go to the Forum!  |  Back to Currently Playing | Back to Toronto 2004

Home | Currently Playing | For Rent | Video Obsession 
Movie Forum | Guestbook | Links | "Get to know us!"

©2004 Moviepie e-mail us