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Tarnation , 27 May 2005
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Tarnation
on DVD
(2004)
Starring: Jonathan Caouette
Director: Jonathan Caouette
Certificate: 
If you liked Capturing the Friedmans, you really need to see this. This is an autobiographical documentary by Jonathan Couette, chronicling his life, with a more than average dose of familial dysfunction, through the use of video footage, which Couette has (self-)obsessively filmed since the age of 11, a montage of photographs and snippets of TV, films, answerphone messages, text on black sreeens and pulse-raising music.
The film, made on a shoestring budget of a few hundred dollars, brings the reality of mental disorder to the screen in way that makes you feel uncomfortable, tense and unable to stop watching. The narrative itself if compelling - Couette's mother, whom he calls by her name, Renee, as a young girl was subjected to 2 years of electric shock treatment by her parents after a fall left her paralysed for 6 months. Renee never had full possession of her mental faculties from then on, and spent the rest of her life in and out of psychiatric care.
Jonathan, after watching his mother raped at the age of three and abused in foster home, is sent to live with his grandparents, the very same people who gave shock treatment to his mother.
Even these details do not prepare you for what you will see. Particularly compelling and disturbing is the young Jonathan (11) filming himself as a pregnant Southern belle who has been beaten and raped.
Jonathan's voyeurism - indeed it is strange that even the most emotional moments of his life are committed to film, something that seems increasingly sinister and self-indulgent the older he gets - is explained in part by his depersonalisation disorder. He sees his life as if through a lens or a dream like state, disassociated from his own life, almost like the narrator of a tale.
Ultimately this is a story of a young gay man living the most bizarre life, struggling to understand why he is the way that he is. This involves delving into the lives of those around him. His portrayal of his grandparents is particualrly unsettling - they are not two dimensional villians. He clearly has affection for them and they are consumed by their own form of madness, characterised by hysteria and paranoia.
His love for his mother is boundless and obvious, although at times one does feel that she is being manipulated by him for the sake of the film, nowhere more obvious than when probing her, she walks away, not wanting to discuss her past any further, at which point Couette shouts after her 'I only want you to help me with my film...'.
This is not not light-hearted viewing - it may well make you shift in your seat and recognise in its characters shades of what we know but don't talk about, but you will remember it for a long time to come. Putting aside whatever motivations the young Couette had to document his life in this way, we should all be glad that he did.
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