The Ins and Outs -- losses of bouts -- of a Texan Family

So.. Wow.. I’ve definitely a lot to say about Jonathan Caouette’s Tarnation. The fact that it’s filmed entirely by him, and him from a young age is really remarkable. Is this foresight? It seems like it, but at that young of an age there’s no way Caouette could have realized that the sum total of his years of filming would be the lifeline of an award-winning documentary. Or..Can..It!?
Can I call this an artistic exploitation of the enigmatic history of four members of a family? It’s so about each Adolph and Rosemary, Renee and Jonathan. Clearly Jonathan gets the most visually in depth look at himself in the piece.
His experimental, secretive monologues near the beginning of our acquaintanceship with him are shocking. Not so shocking that he is portraying a girl and doing dramatic monologues; he establishes in his first scene his sexuality. What’s shocking is the inclusion of tapes which have been kept and studied for years (as is assumed with much of his earlier material). In two consecutive showings of these
early-years monologues, the documentary cuts SO abruptly it makes you feel awkward. Was I shocked at the cinematic technique? Maybe partially, but more so by a 7 year old pouring his heart into the camera, and about some pretty crazy weird stuff.
The same feeling I felt at the beginning of the movie... I felt at times as though I was learning the pictorial history of the family of an axe murder, and would you believe it? It was all the music! The intense and uncomfortable audio accompanying the short.. bursts.. of.. sentences.. which narrate throughout the documentary not only convey feeling, but pull that feeling out of you, like out of your pores of your forearms and the back of your legs. Everywhere. I don’t believe there is anything ill to be said about the early content and its grainy features; the two media (sketchy music/sketchy video) just play off each other so well, and a lot of time Caouette (in his young originality) is to thank.
He not only helps maintain the eerie allure of scenes, but audio wise he will tease and flash whichever image (possibly a simple feature of iMac media use) to match the distorted music or background audio – very uncomforting. (At this point in the movie all I wrote was “scary noise reverberates flashing picture”).
I feel like I could talk for days about Jonathan. As a viewer, I thought about his homosexuality in relation to his a character in the film. When his childhood is explained, foster care abuse, finally being adopted by Adolph and Rosemary, you want to feel bad for him for having such hard early years. But then when you understand he has discovered this outlet – media – and uses it so extensively, you become trapped by his youth.
An interesting part early on is a recording of his voice. He is discussing many issues, one of which is the fact of his sexuality. He is SO young and saying something to the effect of “Yes of course I’m gay, I’ve always been gay, I’ve always known it.” This sound bite is accompanied by other footage of him growing up, and one frame I remember especially. In keeping with the remembrance of Renee’s jumping off the roof, Jonathan has the camera set up on the roof looking down at him.
Everything I’ve discussed this far happens relatively early in the film. As Jonathan’s adolescence begins, the narration reveals his first experience with drugs was the smoking of two PCP laced joints in succession. “It was later found out that both joints were dipped in formaldehyde.” Holy shit!! What are they smoking in Texas!? Like most people I know smoke drugs, get high, then go buy more. If you smoke formaldehyde consistently, or are sick enough to give them to some little kid, how are you not dead already!?
Tarnation definitely as a reality piece does a lot. Apart from the fact it’s all real footage, it has various examples of straight up how bad people are. How sick and deranged the world is and that sometimes it doesn’t matter who you are – you can’t help it. There’s the man who rapes Renee in Chicago, Jonathan’s foster parents, Adolph and Rosemary (who it is never quite clear if they abused Renee), the doctors administering shock treatment to Renee, and again the drug dealer who lives in her building, and essentially gives Jonathan brain damage. I think the movie says a lot about how a lot can go wrong in life, and even more will go wrong if you’re in an unlucky enough of a situation.