Tarnation

Shot as a home movie collage might be, on next to nothing, is actor-director Jonathan Caouette’s patchwork view of his own life. Caouette is a raw upbeat young man coming from a tough and haphazard upbringing. He began shooting footage of his family at the age of 11 and then learning of his mother’s mental illness and lithium overdose, returned to Texas to help her. It’s kind of inevitable then that Caouette’s life should be colourful and incident-filled as you’ll find if you sit through this fragmentary account of his life

Tarnation as a film is a jerky, unsettling collection of moments – handheld camera, small bits of interspliced footage, split-screen scenes, random pieces of music, word slogans that appear on screen, voicemail messages and of course Caouette’s shock at learning of his mother’s overdose. It’s also a cruel indictment of the shock treatment practice issued on his mother that some felt would do her good.

Granted it’s an indulgent work of an extrovert young gay man wanting to put his own imprint on his life. Showing relationships, moments at school, home life and music and mostly capturing the love that Caouette has for his unstable mother.

Caouette as a director, has successfully used Apple’s iMovie editing package to put this together and whilst its not easy viewing given that the camera doesn’t linger on an image or a scene for very long at all, it does have an innovate, experimental angle that will be applauded by many and certainly perhaps by those eager to make films of their own but like Caouette, needing to make it on a shoestring budget. This is like a doc-style auto-biography on film and it works on a raw, visceral level as a capture of basic emotion and a study of abuse and the cruelties of dysfunctional upbringing.

Matt Arnoldi