Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
Filmmaker Jonathan Caouette's documentary on growing up with his schizophrenic mother -- a mixture of snapshots, Super-8, answering machine messages, video diaries, early short films, and more -- culled from 19 years of his life.
Tarnation is a genuinely singular work — assembled almost entirely in iMovie from two decades of home footage, snapshots, answering machine messages, and short films, it creates a hallucinatory self-portrait unlike almost anything in documentary cinema. The cinematography/visual construction earns a 4 for its raw, collage-like intensity and emotional immediacy. Novelty is equally high: the lo-fi, autobiographical, confessional form predates the YouTube age and feels startlingly original. The 'plot' functions more as emotional accumulation than structured narrative — coherent enough to move but meandering in places, landing at a 3. Acting is largely non-professional and naturalistic, serving the documentary mode well without being remarkable. The ending dissipates rather than resolves, leaving the film feeling slightly unfinished — a genuine structural weakness that earns a 2.