Jonathan Caouette’s debut film Tarnation, acclaimed for being the first film made entirely with Apple computer program iMovie, details Caouette’s troubling upbringing and the continuous decline of his small-town Texas family. Caouette uses real footage from his life, much of it either eerily serene or tellingly dysfunctional, to recount his family’s suffering as a result of their blind dependence on modern mental health science.
The film’s elementary composition, however, clouds the story, unarguably due to Caouette’s highly celebrated use of iMovie. Transitions throughout the film, seemingly Power-Point-like, lack creativity, as does the division of the screen throughout the movie into four parts. To the audience, this amateurism shows adherence to the presets in iMovie, not Caouette’s ingenuity. And while budding film students may find it encouraging that this movie was an official selection at Cannes and Sundance-considering that Caouette never left his apartment making it-the primary downfall of Tarnation is that it avoided a more complex filmmaking process that could have made it a much better film.
In addition, it’s a little too easy for the audience to recognize Andy Warhol’s influence on the visual elements of the film. The four-framed screen is very reminiscent of Warhol’s Marilyn or Jackie O. pieces, familiar to artists and simpletons alike, as is the abundance of color-reversal techniques. It would have been better if this creative dependence had been subtler, or if Caouette had incorporated some of his own, original visual elements in addition to his own footage.
The premise of the film “Your greatest creation is the life you lead,” is also unoriginal and worn out. Caouette’s life is more upsetting, disturbing and horrifying than “great.” Nevertheless, it is a story worth telling.
Caouette was born to a single mother, left to foster care after his mother’s chronic mental illness became severe and then placed into the hands of his seemingly insane grandparents. We also find out that he saw his mother raped and was abused and molested during his stay in foster care. As Caouette aged, his circumstances didn’t improve. He realized at 11 that he was gay, and was prone to experimentation with drugs and self-mutilation.
The chronicle is captured on tape, along with monologues performed by Caouette, including ones where he impersonates southern women confessing the horrors of their abusive husbands and sexual relationships. These scenes are some of the most eerie and disturbing of the film. While the audience recognizes Caouette’s incredible acting talent, it’s painfully evident that much of it stems from coping with his tortuous childhood and fermenting pain.
The true subject of the film, however, is Caouette’s mother, whose life was by no means charmed either. At one point she was a beautiful child model, but she fell off of her roof at age 12. Her parents, highly suspicious of the nature of this fall, began giving her shock treatments to cure what they thought was a mental disease, but which was probably just a severe bout of teenage angst. These shock treatments, Caouette shows in the film, are what led to her debilitated state throughout his life.
Caouette’s teenage years are depressing and abnormal, but his overzealousness with the camera and his self-indulgence become too repetitive and eventually repugnant. Caouette seems to have missed, in his narcissism and self-pity, that his mother’s story, more than his own, is the heart of Tarnation.
In a question and answer session after the screening of his film at D.C.’s E Street theatre, Caouette said that the activist in him wanted to get his mother’s story out, so that “people will have more empathy for the mentally ill.” With greater effort, Caouette could have reached this goal. As it stands, that story seems more an afterthought or Caouette’s repressed regret at seeing that this message failed to resonate.
Later in the discussion, he expressed his fear concerning the return of administering shock therapy to treat depression. After seeing the state of his mother in her old age-dancing around with a pumpkin, speaking nonsensical sentences, laughing sporadically and maniacally and living in conditions that lead Caouette to call Human Health Services-his argument is convincing.
In the end, sitting through the pain of Caouette and his mother’s life is not worth Caouette’s lack of original ideas and talent. The movie shows the horrible plight of people who suffer from mental illness and the agony it causes the loved ones who are caught in their path. Unfortunately, it took a question and answer session with Caouette to come to this conclusion. If you can sit through Caouette’s narcissism and poor production techniques, the story lying beneath the film may appeal to you. However, if you don’t want to walk out of the theatre sad and unimpressed this holiday season, make sure you avoid Tarnation.
