|
 The
so-called American independent-cinema movement is largely the creation
of studio-owned boutiques, but every once in a while a true indie
shows up. Jonathan Caouette’s Tarnation (at Film Forum) was
shot on video and edited on an Apple desktop computer, and, pre-Sundance,
supposedly cost $218.32 to produce. It’s a prime example of
outsider art—a movie made by someone who simply had to make
it (a rare phenomenon). Caouette, now 32, has been documenting his
world on film since he was 11, and it’s clear that for him,
moviemaking is a form of salvation from a life of horrible dysfunction.
Tarnation incorporates twenty years of footage from Caouette’s
life into a jangly, hallucinatory jag; it’s as if he were channel-surfing
his mindscape. Growing up gay in Texas foster homes, with a schizophrenic
mother, Renee, and uncomprehending grandparents, Jonathan created
an alternate universe for himself from the oddments of pop culture—grade-Z
horror movies, musicals, and Warhol pictures, many of which he excerpts
in Tarnation. He includes Super-8 snippets, photo-booth snapshots
of himself as a baby with his mother, sequences from his early shorts
such as The Ankle Slasher, and clips of himself dressed up as an
abused woman or a goth girl. We see him receive the news by telephone
that his mother, who now lives with him in Queens, has overdosed
on lithium. (He throws up immediately afterward.) By all odds, Tarnation
should have been an unwatchable, masochistic morass, but Caouette’s
love for the broken Renee—which is the true subject of the
film—is awe-inspiring. And there’s a new-style underground
sensibility at work here—a fearless instinct for how movies
can be tempered to fit one’s own psyche. The technology for
making films of this sort is now so cheap that we could be on the
verge of a real independent-cinema movement. (1 hr. 28 mins.; NR)
— PETER RAINER
Spotlight: Auto-Focus
"We joke about taglines, like, 'Tarnation: More Than
You Needed to Know,' or, 'Tarnation: Why Would You Go See
This Film?'" jokes Jonathan Caouette, whose autobiographical
Tarnation brilliantly records his less-than-picaresque life
with a schizophrenic mother. Despite the tough material, the surprisingly
moving film has become "kind of a calling card," he says,
enabling him to move on from the rough period recounted onscreen
to the kind of career he once dreamed of in Texas, then during his
years working as a Fifth Avenue doorman. "It's literally introduced
me and surrounded me with every single hero in the film and art
world that I've ever wanted to meet," he says. John Cameron
Mitchell signed on to produce; John Waters invited him to dinner.
And suddenly, he's found funding for his next project—an ambitious
experiment for which he's taking "three films from the seventies
with one actress and remixing them into a totally new two-hour feature."
(He won't say who the star he's "directing" is.) Getting
what you want, he says, has become a surreal experience. "I
keep wondering if it's really the year 2077," Caouette says,
marveling at how quickly things change, "where there's this
microchip in my brain right now, and all this is just some crazy
fantasy." — LOGAN HILL
Opens October 6 at CC Film Forum, 212-727-8110
• Showtimes
& tickets (movietickets.com)
|
