We rewatched "Tarnation," a 2004 primal scream of an autobiography from Jonathan Caouette chronicling his abusive childhood and his schizophrenic mother. This damaged man, around 30 at the time of the movie's release, was an inveterate video diarist, starting as a child. His home performance, as an adolescent, of a woman tortured by domestic abuse would be the stuff of legend if Caouette had stayed on track as a performer.
But it's the scenes with his mother, Renee, that are the most compelling and disturbing. The film overall features machine-gun editing and early-MTV flourishes and quick cuts, but the filmmaker knows when to pause and let a scene play out. He trains the camera on his mom multiple times, during various schizophrenic breakdowns and refuses to cut away. The effect is lurid but also informative. The pain behind her eyes is heartbreaking.
Caouette also spends time with Renee's parents, Adolph and Rosemary, who raised him. That's a generous term. At least they didn't lobotomize him, like they did to the young-adult Renee, crippling her for life. Caouette also tracks down his birth father, who visits both him and Renee for a dreadfully uncomfortable scene.
Throughout, Caouette is struggling to keep his own relationship together, blessed with a patient partner. But evil lurks around every corner, especially as his grandparents age and emerge as horror-movie figures.
The narrative sometimes fractures, as if to mirror his or Renee's thoughts and perspectives. The pace is frenetic, with the screen sometimes splitting and multiplying in psychedelic fashion. Connecting it all is that Jonathan character, a born performer but doomed by a lack of discipline and focus. If he had come of age 20 years later, he would be a Tik-Tok phenomenon, with no need to polish his hits and streamline them into a coherent feature film.
Bonus points for the eclectic soundtrack, dropping in samples from Bob Dylan and Marianne Faithful, as well as more recent deep cuts from Magnetic Fields. It reportedly cost Caouette only a few thousand dollars to put his collage together but a few hundred thousand dollars to secure the soundtrack.
GRADE: A-minus
* - Holy Crap is an occasional series about unique films, cutting a wide swath from brilliant to awful. Check out previous entries here.
BONUS TRACKS
One classic tune is "After Loving You" by Jean Wells:
And Lisa Germano's contribution is "Reptile":
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