Everyone has their own personal pains and struggles, but for filmmaker Jonathan Caouette, his tortured life takes on a horrible, surreal drama. In \Tarnation,"" currently showing at the Orpheum Theatre, 216 State St., Caouette weaves together a nightmarish autobiographical tapestry, detailing his life growing up with a schizophrenic mother. Caouette's story is heart-wrenching, yet fascinating.
This is documentary filmmaking like nothing else. Culled from a remarkable assortment of Super8 home videos, amateur films and snapshots, this film was edited on iMovie, a program that comes free with Mac Computers. The text of the cards that narrate the film is in a Times New Roman-looking font that would be more at home in a high school video production class than in a film that was shown at both Cannes and Sundance. The amateurish look reminds the audience that what's onscreen is not a result of actors, writers, and directors-it's the product of one man's shocking life and of those around him.
The story begins before Jonathan's birth, with the early life of his mother, Renee Leblanc. Happy and beautiful, Renee's life is fine until an unfortunate fall from the roof leaves Renee partially paralyzed for six months. Her parents inexplicably conjecture that the paralysis was not a real physical problem, that it was all in her head and therefore there is something mentally wrong with her. They subject her to an unfathomably aggressive plan of electroshock therapy which she emerges from altered and brain-damaged, leading her down the path of what eventually will become schizophrenia.
To convey the gradual worsening of Renee's situation, Caouette plays with the colors and contrast of unremarkable photographs such as pictures from Renee's modeling career. The images fly by but return to the same few disquieting pictures. This gets to the point that the montage almost becomes too disturbing to watch.
This expression of the mundane in the horrifying context which it becomes for them is the real strength of the film. Renee is institutionalized within the first few years of Jonathan's life, and soon goes to live with his grandparents. In these formative years of his life, Jonathan has to deal with mental imbalances of his own, in particular Depersonalization Disorder. This condition which causes a constant feeling of being in a dream is apparently the basis for Caouette's surreal, arresting visual style. Attempting to overcome the hardships in his life, Jonathan tries to lose himself in B-movies and musicals, and at one point the film becomes a hallucinogenic amalgamation of video of himself played alongside clips from numerous movies and plays of the '80s and '90s.
But despite the trancelike handling of his personal life, Caouette's examination of his sometimes-present mother is treated with stark, uncomfortable directness. He uses these segments to also highlight the inconsiderate behavior of his grandparents to both his and his mother's plight.
In one of the film's most memorable scenes, Renee performs an outlandish improvised song and dance with a miniature pumpkin for at least five minutes. In the background is her father, who not once looks up from his coffee and newspaper despite the spectacle. Incidents like this emphasize the sadness of Jonathan's life even more. But despite it all, Caouette proves that even the most tragic story can be translated into a profound success of a film.
