MovieChat Forums > Tarnation (2004) Discussion > Not narcissistic or indulgent

Not narcissistic or indulgent

posted 18 years ago by dinopass
20 replies | jump to latest

All the comments on this being an indulgent and narcissitic film are way off base in my mind and misunderstand the main motivation. This comes from a confused, scared, human being from a very difficult background trying to understand how and why he is and overcome the fear that he will end up like his mother.

It's simply someone trying to find the answers, as we all are in one or another, about himself and who he is and he happened to be smart and brave enough to put it on film.

And through all of that he he comes off as a deeply caring person somehow. How many of us would take our mentally ill mothers into our one bedroom apartments in NY?

I loved it. Between it being deeply personal and the dreamy, trippy, editing it made for a unique and engaging documentary.

If you are someone who wrote it off immediately as being self indulgent I'd say watch it again objectively and think about how many of us would be able to bare such deep and personal issues to the world

[–] HilaryClinton08 18 years ago

I agree.

[–] 18 years ago

[deleted]

[–] PipeAllSummerLong 18 years ago

I think there's a slight contradiction there. You say he/the film isn't narcissistic, and then ask how many would be able to bare such personal issues to the world. Narcissists for a start! It all comes from the idea that his personal issues are something which the world needs to see or has some immense value.

I think the film is really well put together, beautifully shot and as a visual piece works brilliantly. But it is a horribly self obssessed film, and really tells the audience little. It's not about mental illness, and it doesn't show what it's like to live with it. The major problem with this is that everything is filtered through his own sense of self importance and ego, and as such, is meaningless other than a snapshot in into the mind of one person. It has no wider relevance, which is a shame since there was real potential here.

And quite a few people take in their mentally ill mothers/realtives etc. Few do it, film it and expect us to applaud.

[–] puffymuffin9 18 years ago

Just because it's a memoir doesn't mean that Caouette is expecting pity or us to cry and think something like, "Gee, what a horrible life he had! I feel so bad for him god god god." and if that's all you get from the film, then you might want to watch it again and try to get past the narration, okay? Good. People who just write it off as some lame pity-flick aren't really trying to see the message that he's trying to bring to the surface, and for one: why would he make a movie and bring it to Sundance if all he wanted was sympathy? Is Sundance really the place to look to have people trying to sympathize with you? No, it's about film and unless he's a complete idiot, there are other ways to get pity than by releasing a documentary to film festivals.

That's the point, that it's not uncommon but not many if any have attempted to capture it on film like Caouette has. I don't think he really cares about applause but cares more about the effect it will have on his audience.

[–] fructosez 18 years ago

Searching these boards, I see that many people have declared the movie narcissistic.

Unfortunately, calling a memoir narcissistic is about as insightful as noticing that an action film has people running in it. It's pretty much a tautology. It's what happens in the genre. A reasonable person would not go into a science-fiction film and complain when the technology presented has not been invented.

[–] PipeAllSummerLong 18 years ago

Clearly you haven't met many sci-fi geeks then! They always seem to be complaining about some aspect or other!

But I think most memoirs aren't narcissistic really. They are self absorbed to an extent, and that's their nature. But it takes something special to move into narcissism. Or perhaps people are just bothered by the complete lack of insight or self-analysis one would expect from a truly good memoir/autobiography. Otherwise it's just a vanity project and holds little interest to the wider audience.

I also think that a more compelling criticism is that it's been marketed as being about the problems with his mother, but on the basis of this film he seems to have little interest in her or her experiences, other than how it affected his own life.

[–] fructosez 18 years ago

>Clearly you haven't met many sci-fi geeks then! They always seem to be complaining about some aspect or other!

This doesn't respond to what I said. Yes, sci-fi fans will complain about things. These things include inconsistencies in plot and world development, out of character moments, and so on. But I specified a thing to complain about, to make a comparison about memoirs. No reasonable person, sci-fi geek or not, would go into a sci-fi film and come out complaining that the film featured hypothetical technological advances.

Anyway.

>But I think most memoirs aren't narcissistic really. They are self absorbed to an extent, and that's their nature.
>But it takes something special to move into narcissism.

I don't know that I really agree here. I imagine this will start to feel like semantics, however. But imagine going through the effort of making an autobiographical film yourself, the actual decision and work of presenting yourself for a wide audience. You must assume that people are going to be interested in you and what you do in order to do this. It seems inherently narcissistic, especially if your activities have never had world reaching effects. At the very least, as I said before, observing that a film like this is narcissistic is about the least insightful thing you could say about it.
They are vanity projects, through and through.

>I also think that a more compelling criticism is that it's been marketed as being about the problems with his mother, but on the
>basis of this film he seems to have little interest in her or her experiences, other than how it affected his own life.

I'm not sure how the film was marketed, so I don't know the weight of this criticism. I just rewatched the trailer, and I don't see how a reasonable person could conclude that this film is not about the relationship between him and his mother, as they share screentime in the trailer and one of the laudatory quotes indicates this. Actually, he may appear in it more. Perhaps people read mistaken reviews. Regardless, this outside influence seems of only slight significance as a criticism brought to the film itself. This is a criticism of unfortunate marketing, and not the film.

Other criticisms, such as that of exploitation, are interesting, but is that not the same problem that comes up in text memoirs? The details of other people's lives are laid out for anyone to see, with or without their permission. Perhaps people are more bothered by video being used for this.

[–] Pitster04 18 years ago

I agree. I loved this film.

~+ Excuse me - you're standing on my sleeve. +~

[–] hurricanepictures426 18 years ago

I disagree, This film would of been very touching if it was a half hour long, however there was so much excess of trees and cemeteries being driven by in fast motion, amongst other footage that really didn't further anything and was just there to make the film seem touching or padded out. I think he's trying to hard to get sympathy especially by doing alot of the factual things in the third person. If these are his films, his life, his memories, why not do it in the first person instead of distancing us from him in the narrative. The parts about his mother were much more enduring then anything he did about himself. And all the overly stylized MTV aspects of it were just plain annoying. The raw footage of the shots would of been much more powerful, but i don't think jonathan wanted it to have that, he wanted to seem innovative in using every technique he could off his apple's editing program.

I was really disappointed by the film, especially after so many people told me great things about it, i thought it was going to be a great emotional experience, not an inflated pity piece.

"Indulgence is the key word here." Woody Allen, Annie Hall

[–] amorris2 18 years ago

...there was so much excess of trees and cemeteries being driven by in fast motion, amongst other footage that really didn't further anything and was just there to make the film seem touching or padded out.

The raw footage of the shots would of been much more powerful, but i don't think jonathan wanted it to have that, he wanted to seem innovative in using every technique he could off his apple's editing program.

I agree, hurricane. I got the feeling that Jonathan said to himself "wow, my mom just overdosed on lithium. That makes me interesting enough that I can put together all that footage I've shot and make it a movie!" And here's why I think that:

If the movie was made simply to show what it was like having a mother who's mentally ill, why did he include so much footage of himself just hanging out being amazingly good-looking with his amazingly good-looking boyfriends? How did that further the narrative? (Don't get me wrong, either, I love looking at footage of amazingly good-looking men!)

In some ways I think Jonathan had his mom move in with him because of all the drama and "photo ops" it would create for him. Consider, for instance, the scene in which his mother is sleeping on the couch, and he sits down next to her and lays his head next to her. He's not there because she needed him there, because he had to calm her down enough to help her sleep or something like that. No, he simply inserted his own pretty face in the shot while she was unconscious. In my opinion, that shot (which incidentally, or actually, maybe not incidentally, is the one Roger Ebert used in his review of the movie) is the epitome of the self-aggrandizement evident throughout the rest of the film.

Finally, I think that Jonathan's "concern" that he will become like his mother is a little disingenuous. There was quite a bit of evidence that her problems were caused by the shock treatments and the subsequent medications, and that they weren't genetic, right? So why would he be any more likely to develop the problems she had than the average Joe off the street?

All that having been said--really, I don't think there's anything wrong with Jonathan making a movie about how cute he is, and how having a mentally ill mother affected him. I believe in self-disclosure as a technique of getting to know oneself. But if, in making that self-disclosure, Jonathan is not honest with himself about his motives, the exercise won't do him much good. I think that it's wrong to say that he made a movie that is not narcissistic or indulgent. He absolutely did. Ain't it grand?

[–] DuckyGirl 18 years ago

Finally, someone who put my thoughts into words! Thank you! I was so sick of the pointless editing tricks. I know they can serve a purpose, but in my opinion, they were not here. If he wanted to add to the depiction of mental illness by making me feel like I had one too (after watching all the strobe effects), I guess he accomplished that, but not much else.

[–] angelbooty 18 years ago

I agree as well. For as much as I liked this film, it had little to do with growing up with a mentally ill mother. It was much more centered around himself.

The visual effects were stunning, but there was just TOO MUCH!! Enough already I kept thinking. His life and family seemed very facinating, and I continually waited for the 'meat' of the film. Unfortunately there wasn't much. Another unsettling feeling I got, was Jonathan's 'performance'. I call it a performance because his emotion seemed so forced. Believe me, I am not doubting his love for his mother and grandparents, but it seemed so planned. His tears had the emotional depth of Paris Hilton...

I feel that the film would have captured my heart had it been cut in half. If he wants to make another visual masterpiece it should be billed as that, and i would probably enjoy it. What I think some of the people on this board are trying to say, is that they expected a little more insight into his mother, and there was little. It was seen through his eyes, and that's not an entirely bad thing, but he did come off as self absorbed...almost like he seemed to say 'look at me...LOOK AT ME...I'm the REAL crazy person...' 'I sucked you in with my mother, and now you have to see what's in my brain...'

Jonathan is a truly talented person, but this movie misses the mark, for being slightly misleading in it's description.

[–] LextheXFile 12 years ago

Amorris and DuckyGirl- you guys just summed up my thoughts perfectly. :) Well said, both of you.

And yeah, after all those editing tricks I began to feel disconnected and "depersonalized" too. Whoa. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy parts of this film, because there were parts I found interesting (although "enjoyed" is probably too strong a word).

There were parts I found disturbing, such as the extended shot of Rosemary after her stroke.

I did find myself questioning why there were so many close up shots of his handsome face and so many editing tricks (a few might have been interesting, spaced out and used sparingly to punctuate the parts where Jon or his mother really loses it but it was so constant that the effect was lost).

The scene at the end could have been very poignant if it hadn't been so staged. For instance, this documentary would have interested me much more if Jonathan had simply turned the cameras on and left them running continuously so he didn't know in advance what he would shoot or not shoot. Because he was using a hand held camera that he could turn on and off it felt staged.

Something like a "nanny cam" in different rooms of the house over an extended period (for the scenes where he is an adult) mixed with some of his video tape from childhood and perhaps school photos, drawings, hospital records and notes for himself and his mother would have made this movie feel more like an objective documentary.

If he was hospitalized 8 times and his mother, over 100, there are sure to be hospital records full of interesting facts and figures that could have been presented. It also would have been interesting to have interviews (in person and over the telephone) with specialists in the field of clinical psychiatry discussing ECT and schizophrenia, opponents to ECT, as well as attempts to get his and his mother's "doctors" on film commenting.

I would have preferred more of a Michael Moore approach and maybe some interviews (extended) with neighbors, his boyfriend, etc...

When I pull the wings off of the fly/ The fly never wonders why I did it.

[–] DuckyGirl 12 years ago

Great points. And I loved getting a response to something I wrote 5 and a half years ago. I hadn't thought about this movie in a long time, but reading your comment helped me remember it very clearly.

[–] josieg01 17 years ago

Surely a first person narrative would have been a more obvious attempt to generate sympathy? It seems to me that he uses third person narrative for the very reason that it distances himself from his experiences, in exactly the same way as filming the events will have done.
The criticism that he aims for innovation over emotional impact seems flawed... the fact that the film is edited simply using iMovies means that it could never have been innovative in this stylistic sense. I think that much of the editing reflects Caouette's emotions during particular parts of his life.

[–] qouth_the_raven 18 years ago

I don't think the concept is self-indulgent. To the contrary it was a wothwhile expose of dysfunction, superstitious people living in a time and in a place that was, itself, uninformed.

However moving past the concept, the presentation *was* self indulgent (as is any autobiography) and lacked self insight. Perhaps if he'd spent less time looking at life throught the view finder he might have had a better grasp on reality, but then we'd not have had this fascinating movie.

It also shows that people who protect their faces behind bits of machinery can be real bullies.

[–] epb2102 18 years ago

To various posters who have confused the terms: thinking one's issues are important in a universal sense isn't a symptom of narcissism. It may be vain, but, at the end of the day, what artist isn't vain on some level?

[–] alabaster815 18 years ago

I just watched this film for the first time tonight, and while in some way it's pointless to argue with people who've posted on here and have seemed to have made up their minds, I just thought I'd throw in my two cents.

It seems to me that if this is a film jam-packed with self-indulgence and whiney "me-me-me" overtones, then I think it would be a correct assumption that every film, fiction or nonfiction, mirrors the same extremity. Jonathan, as I see it, is an artist and writer in his own right, and so is every screenwriter/director/actor out there, be they in Hollywood or filming with a rented camera in their basement.

It's also my opinion that if Jonathan had used actors and a script to recreate his life as he knew it, we wouldn't be complaining so much. We would see it as a drama, possibly indie film, with a lot of insight to the real world and not a whole lot of regard for inexplicit nature.

So let's face it, the documentary was a first person film, taken from Jonathan's viewpoint, and since it's from his POV, not his mother's, not his grandparents', not his boyfriend's, just him - we can expect to see a lot more of him since he's essentially the protagonist. You don't watch films with leading roles and say, "Wow, they're full of themselves," just because they have the limelight most of the time, now do we?

Anyhow. This is just my opinion.

[–] PipeAllSummerLong 17 years ago

I don't think every piece of fiction is self-indulgent or mirroring the life of the author. A lot are, but not all.

Either way, my biggest problem with the film was the dishonesty and lack of insight that accompanied it. He was saying he was making the film about one thing, but really it was about another. In fiction, a good author would make that a central point of the storytelling device, i.e. the unreliable narrator. Here he exhibited no such self awareness. The film would have been improved tenfold if he had shown a bit of insight into his motives. But he was a drama queen and believed that what was really interesting about his mother's situation was that it was *his* mother.