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65
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64
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60
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57
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55
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54
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54
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53
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53
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52
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51
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51
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49
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47
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47
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43
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42
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36
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36
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31
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78
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73
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71
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|
Tarnation
Wellspring Media
MPAA RATING: Not Rated
Starring
Jonathan Caouette,
Michael Cox,
Adolph Davis,
Rosemary Davis,
Renee Leblanc,
and
David Sanin Paz
Jonathan Caouette's film reimagines the whole idea of what a documentary can be. He weaves a psychedelic whirlwind of snapshots, Super-8 home movies, answering machine messages, video diaries, early short films, snippets of 80s pop culture and dramatic reenactments to create an epic portrait of an American family torn apart by dysfunction and reunited through the power of love. (Wellspring Media)
| GENRE(S): |
Documentary
|
Drama
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Jonathan Caouette
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Jonathan Caouette
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: May 17, 2005
Video: May 17, 2005
Theatrical: October 6, 2004
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
88 minutes, B/W / Color |
| ORIGIN: |
USA |

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
100
Village Voice
J. Hoberman
A tale of sadness and hysteria so raw that it bleeds.

100
New York Post
Lou Lumenick
Caouette has used art, wit and a huge heart to forge his experiences into an unqualified masterpiece.

100
Christian Science Monitor
David Sterritt
Harrowing, extremely disturbing at times, but brought to the screen in dazzling pop-art images that make the movie's grim content very much worth watching.

100
Slate
David Edelstein
A collage of pain that breaks over you like a wave. Every second you can feel the cost to Caouette of what he's showing: The sounds and the images are like a pipeline from his unconscious to the screen.

100
Chicago Reader
Meredith Brody
It's something of a masterpiece: a confessional experimental documentary with echoes, both conscious and unconscious, of filmmakers from Andy Warhol to John Cassavetes, Stan Brakhage to David Lynch.

100
Boston Globe
Wesley Morris
A masterpiece.

100
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
It is a remarkable film, immediate, urgent, angry, poetic and stubbornly hopeful.

91
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
Painfully beautiful autobiographical kaleidoscope.

90
LA Weekly
Ella Taylor
Caouette lifts his story clear out of the victimized whine that bogs down so many confessional memoirs and offers the viewer instead an intimate look inside his ravaged yet loving head, at once street-smart and haloed by the naiveté of a young saint.

90
The New York Times
Dana Stevens
Certainly one of the strangest and most interesting movies of the year, and I suspect that in years to come a number of other strange and interesting movies will show traces of its influence.

90
The Hollywood Reporter
Sheri Linden
Layering soundtrack and visuals in an intricate collage of rich emotional texture, he (Jonathan Caouette) displays an exhilarating talent.

90
Washington Post
Michael O'Sullivan
It is incomplete, contradictory, as multifaceted (and as brilliant) as a diamond.

90
Washington Post
Stephen Hunter
You may not want to hang with the haunted Caouettes, but the movie is so compelling, it doesn't give you a choice.

90
Los Angeles Times
Kenneth Turan
A remarkable and remarkably compelling document.

89
Austin Chronicle
Marjorie Baumgarten
Sometimes people grow up sane despite the best efforts of society to drive them mad. This is the case for filmmaker Jonathan Caouette.

88
Miami Herald
Rene Rodriguez
The movie is such an intense, disturbing and exhilarating experience, even five more minutes might have felt like too much.

88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Stephen Cole
An astonishing multimedia diary.

88
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
The result is a film that defies description. I'd call it some kind of miracle.

88
New York Daily News
Jami Bernard
Tarnation represents a breakthrough in the possibilities of the personal film as a mix of poetry and journalism. It's also harrowing as hell.

88
Chicago Tribune
Michael Wilmington
Watching Jonathan Caouette's amazing autobiographical documentary Tarnation is like descending into a pop-music, underground-movie hell and heaven, the shattered and shattering landscape of a living body and mind.

80
New York Magazine
Peter Rainer
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.

80
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Scott Tobias
Caouette's shattering Tarnation represents a landmark in personal filmmaking: It finally realizes the digital dream of a raw, unsanctioned glimpse into the soul.

80
Empire
David Parkinson
For all the courage and ingenuity of this extraordinary film, it's clear that Caouette has actually resolved few issues and that his life is still very much a work in progress.

80
Dallas Observer
Melissa Levine
In this case, the subject and director are one and the same, and the result is a degree of intimacy--really of rawness--rarely achieved in film.

75
San Francisco Chronicle
Walter Addiego
An impassioned documentary about a damaged American family, includes moments that seem to cross the line of what is emotionally acceptable to show onscreen.

75
Philadelphia Inquirer
Steven Rea
Caouette's fractured history is imbued with heart-crushing sincerity.

75
Charlotte Observer
Lawrence Toppman
One of those documentaries about a family train wreck that makes you wonder how people consented to have their tawdry laundry washed so publicly.

70
Variety
Dennis Harvey
Getting so close to real-life mental illness, via footage that spans many years, renders Tarnation a uniquely potent experience.

70
The New Republic
Stanley Kauffmann
Caouette has opened up a case history vividly, but he has left us without any conclusions, not even with much enlightening empathy. Something more than truth--dare one say "mere truth"?--is needed.

70
The New Yorker
Anthony Lane
The movie is a daunting blend of head trip, cinéma vérité, music video, and auto-therapy.

60
TV Guide
Ken Fox
A bold, painful memoir that finds an innovative middle-ground between conventional documentary and a homemade, home-movie collage.

58
Portland Oregonian
Shawn Levy
I reckon that for everyone who's enthralled by the film there will be others who wish they'd heard about it rather than seen it.


The average user rating for this movie is 7.2 (out of 10) based on 31 User Votes
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