Tarnation

Directed by Jonathan Caouette

Released in the United Kingdom 22 April 2005, in the Netherlands 30 June 2005, and in Germany 29 September 2005

www.i-saw-tarnation.com

Rating: * * * *

Fact was always going to be stranger than fiction for Jonathan Caouette, as Tarnation, his autobiographical documentary, shows. From the age of 11, Caouette filmed himself and his family to the point where they were so used to it that almost everything went on in front of the camera. In most home movies there comes a time where it is appropriate to stop filming. But Caouette kept on rolling. Tarnation is 19 years of footage of his life condensed into 88 minutes.

Caouette's mother, Renee LeBlanc, was a successful child model until she fell off the roof of her house when she was 12. LeBlanc's legs were paralysed for six months before her parents decided that the problem was in her mind and agreed to electroconvulsive therapy. She had two shock treatments a week for two years. Caouette believes these treatments destroyed his mother's personality.

LeBlanc's brief marriage to Steve Caouette produced Jonathan. On a trip to Chicago with her son, Renee was raped in front of her son. She broke down on the bus ride back home, was thrown off the bus for “disturbing” the passengers, and was jailed for six weeks.

During this time, Caouette was housed with a foster family, where he was abused, emotionally and physically. Tied up and beaten, he was just four years old. Because of the abuse, Jonathan was adopted by LeBlanc's parents, Adolph and Rosemary Davis.

Caouette was aware of his homosexuality from an early age, and as he grew up, the gay community helped him to deal with his dysfunctional home life. At the age of 13, Jonathan was getting into over 18 gay clubs by dressing as a petite goth girl. The friends he met here introduced him to a world of punk music and underground films.

Aged 11, he visited his mother and met her drug dealer friend, who let him smoke cannabis. The joints were laced with phencyclidine and dipped in formaldehyde. From this point onwards, Caouette says that he experienced depersonalisation - an unpleasant feeling of being an observer in life.

One of the first scenes is Caouette as an 11 year old introducing himself as Hilary Chapman Laurel Lou Garito, a satirical Southern housewife who was abused while pregnant by her husband. "He say, ‘I kill you, bitch.' But it was the other way around . . . I got out the gun one night. Blew his ass away." Disturbed, but you cannot deny this child's intelligence and wit.

Caouette's autobiography, although more colourful than most people's experiences, is human enough to relate to. He was abused, experimented with illicit drugs, and had a disturbed unconventional upbringing. Yet the most powerful scenes are the universal struggles. His grandmother's deterioration and subsequent death contrasts brutally with her love for Caouette and her support for his passion for film. It is said that before a character dies in any plot, book or film, enough time must be spent exploring their personality so that some grief is felt by the audience. Yet Caouette simply displays her humour and tolerance of constantly being filmed. She is like any grandmother who loves her family; the footage is not of extraordinary but of normal family scenes. We see of her exactly what Caouette sees; we watch her become ill - "I've got TB: tobacco and beer!" - and lose her love of life in a way that is painful to observe if you have ever cared for an ageing family member.

Tarnation has been called "the first masterpiece of the MTV generation," because of its short scenes and the type of effects seen in music videos. The score is constantly changing, using music from the era and scenes are rapid, like an '80s music video. Everything battles for attention - the photographs, home video footage, answering machine messages, telephone calls, his early short films, electronica music, high school plays, letters, telegrams, and titles all tell his story.

Although facing his personal history head on, through a camera lens, Caouette has a morbid fear of his past and also his genetic destiny. On his mother, LeBlanc, visiting his New York apartment, Caouette films himself in the bathroom: "I don't ever want to turn out like my mother and I'm scared. But I love her so much, and I can't escape her. She lives inside me. She's in my hair, behind my eyes, under my skin . . . She's downstairs!"

After the visit, the disturbed LeBlanc leaves Caouette several desperate telephone messages, before taking an overdose of lithium. This damages her further and a seemingly never ending scene where she has a manic episode ensues; we see this through her son's eyes and it is horrifying to watch.

Heavy stuff. But the film ends in a surprisingly uplifting way. As the credits roll, the audience is reminded that Caouette has successfully released his musings in cinemas around the world. His life story has made it onto the official selection at the Sundance, Cannes, Toronto, New York, and Chicago film festivals, and Tarnation was the winner of the best documentary category at the Los Angeles Film Festival. It was made for $218 (£116; €170) on an Apple Macintosh computer and edited using the free iMovie software that came with the computer. Film giants Gus Van Sant and John Cameron Mitchell joined the project as executive producers.

Caouette has made it, not in spite of, but because of his dysfunctional life. Tarnation is the story of how we are more than the sum of our genes.

Nadeeja Koralage, fourth year medical student, University College London
Email: nadeeja@gmail.com


studentBMJ 2005;13:221-264 June ISSN 0966-6494