Tarnation

"Your greatest creation, is the life you lead"

Tarnation is a dark and haunting autobiographical of Jonathan Caouette and his enduring and gruelling relationship with his mother. It is a collection of VHS, Super 8 film and photographs twinned with snippets of answer phone recordings and short films directed by Caouette. Tarnation is an independent production shot on home movie equipment and edited in iMovie on a budget of just $218.

The films avant garde style depicts montage of clips. Its non linear form begins in 2003 where Caouette learns that his mother, Renne, a diagnosed schizophrenic, has overdosed on a prescription of lithium. The narrative then depicts the struggles of Caoutte’s upbringing in a family blighted by trouble and turmoil; endured by him and his mothers remarkable relationship.

Tarnation re-invents the idea of what a documentary can be. It could be said to be a film 20 years in the making, with footage shot by Caouette from the age of 11.

“I conceived the film as a new way of looking at documentary, as though it were imitating my thought process, giving the audience the experience of seeing what it was like to be inside my head.” - Jonathan Caouette

Super 8 as a medium was always invented for amateur film makers and more specically as a format for home movies and the inclusion of this in Tarnation is ideal as it captures the essence of home movie making perfectly.

You might often associate home movie making with images of happiness; smiling faces on family outings and celebration where as Tarnation depicts a much more darker tone of home movie making which in super 8 comes across quite haunting as it juxtaposes to it conformity.

The nature of the film stock is to capture brightly coloured and saturated images where as Tarnation contrasts that identity and replaces is with distressing images of sorrow and despair. This use of home technology captures the emotions of the narrative in its rawest of forms.

With Tarnation being a true tail, the use of super 8 technology to create this film add to its genuine story and forthright way it addresses the audience. There are no reconstructions or staged action it is emotion captured on film in the heat of the moment, with no evidence of a planned out narrative.

The somewhat naturalistic choice of the medium of super 8 captures the emotion of the story it portrays in a raw form which is completely truthful. This format proves itself as a medium of nostalgia due to its connection with the family home. Whether this be used to capture something happy or sad in this occasion is up to what the filmmaker shoots.