well fuck. That was a lot. I can’t say I’ve experienced even a fraction of the pain that this family has, but I deeply connected to Jonathon’s story and related to the ways in which he told it.
While watching, I was reminded of this famous James Baldwin quote:
> *“All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story; to vomit the anguish up.”*
I’ve always agreed with this. That’s why I’m an artist. I love films like Caoette’s that cut right to Baldwin’s definition of art; I mean to compare this movie to vomit, in the most admirable way possible. I really aspire to be this transparent in my work one day.
note:
to say that it aged poorly, because of its iMovie editing, is kind of silly. I don’t get that criticism at all. This is like one of the few films where using a cheap, rudimentary editing tool like this makes perfect sense.
Jonathon Caoette didn’t start production with the goal of impressing you. His personal home movies weren’t initially intended to be something that’d go on to be available on DVD next to Lord of the Rings.
Funny thing is: it IS impressive! The rough 16mm film getting crunched up by digital artefacts is damn near a poetic illustration of repressed trauma - intentional, or not. Jonathon being as candid as he was, as a child, and keeping hold of those recordings was really incredible.
The cheap effects keep this all close to his heart. It would not mean jack shit**, **if the celluloid was upscaled to crisp UHD video - and the distortions to these images wouldn’t pack the punch they do if they were expertly done by someone else on After Effects - those moments only as tactile as they are because of the intimate production process, made possible by this all being on an easy to learn software.
