Tarnation

OK, well where do I start? First of all, the movie Tarnation by Jonathan Caouette, was basically a documentary of his life. The entire film consists of home made footage taken by Jonathan throughout his life. The movie used sequencial order from past to present. I personally felt Tarnation was disturbing and extremely graphic. The movie starts of with Jonathan as a child. His Father had not known that he had even existed because his Mother had never told him. Eventually later in the movie he contacts his Father and all goes well. His Mother on the other hand, was a very disturbed individual. She had fallen off of a roof when she was younger and was not mentally disabled, yet, but she did however get injured. The doctors thought shock treatment would benefit her and it did, but than she became mentally paralyzed. She took drugs and was constantly in and out of Jonathan's life. She was just a completely unstable adult figure to him. I also caught the part where he said he had bought tried either PCP or LSD that was laced. He had bought it from his Mother's drug dealer. I feel the reason that he tried the drug was to in a sense "step in his Mother's shoes". Maybe he wanted to see how she felt due to the fact that she wasn't really able to be there for him.

He was sent off to live with foster parents who had molested him. This I feel was where he met his true character. It is so unfortunate that there are these sick and twisted individuals in this world that have to ruin other people's lives and make them have to suffer for they're own demented enjoyment. Jonthan states that he knew at a very young age he was homosexual. He was not afraid or ashamed at all to share this to the world. His boyfriend David was a symbol of the complete opposite of Renee (his Mother). He was a stable loving person to Jonathan and was always there for him it seemed. David I felt was his rock to all of the mass chaos in his life. Though his Mother was not there to care for him and see him grow into a young man, you could see he loved her very much. What was ironic was that though Renee wasn't there to care for him, he in turn had ended up caring for her towards the end of the movie.

Tarnation was a great documentary of the imperfections in our society. It portrayed not only Jonathan Cauoette's life, but it also gave us a glimpse of what dark demons there are in this world.