Tarnation

[JesterIX]

*WARNING MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS*

Tarnation is a recently released documentary made, directed, written, edited, nad featuring the same man. It charts various periods of his life from age 11 onwards to the present day, age 31. A photo montage technique is also used to portray events where no footage is available. This, combined with the fast cut editing style employed through large parts of the film makes it a fairly intense viewing experience. At first. However where some may see unrelenting high impact imagery I found monotonous repetition. Over all this is an almost non-stop soundtrack comprised mostly of songs rather than score, adding to the density of the movie.

The actual 'story' itself revolved around the admitedly horrifying events of the guys life, and where it has led him. Now at first I was prepared to be dishing out sympathy, as the level of abuse and mental illness in his family is revealed. Of particular interest is his mother, who is in and out of mental institutions for much of his life. She is often commited for shock therapy by her own parents, and it is insinuated that this caused her illness, rather than relieving it. So its all pretty brutal stuff, slammed in your face with this fast cut technique, subtitles telling the relevance of each montage. But then we hit the problems.

The subtitles are all in the third person. Its all 'Jonathan did' or Jonathan felt' not 'I felt'. As soon as he gets old enough to start focusing his camera work on certain aspects he starts to choose his shots more carefully, and at this point I started to loose both sympathy and interest. For me the film quickly turned into an attack on his grandparents, and started to revel in the misery and fucked up nature of his mother. His grandmother has a stroke, and he films her very intently in a debilitated state. There are lingering shots of his mother's manic behaviour, and very intrusive interviews with his increasingly senile grandfather. For much of the time these people clearly dont want to be on camera, but our film maker forces the issue.

In the end I was left feeling at once extremely bored by the whole process, but also rather angry that he had, as it seemed to me, exploited and invaded the lifes of his own family to produce this work. I couldn't see the point of what he was trying to do. There was no contextualised narrative from himself, outlining what he was hoping to explore or discover. I strongly felt that if an outside observer had taken the same footage and cut it in a less agrandsising way, with a view to telling the story of his rather harrowing life, then it could have been a very compelling piece of footage. As it was it came across as self serving, bitter and aggressive.

I would not recommend this movie. It is neither enjoyable nor moving.

2/5

J:IX

[bradavon]

It looks boring to me. Anyone can film their life it doesn't mean it's interesting.

The reviewer over at DVD Times loved it:

http://www.dvdtimes.co.uk/content.php?contentid=56827