This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2004, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Documentary as therapy - as a filmmaker sorts out the tortured bonds of family.

Not rated, but probably R for descriptions of violence, some nudity and language;

88 minutes.

Opening today at the Broadway Centre Cinemas.

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Documentaries don't get more personal than "Tarnation," in which director-producer Jonathan Caouette uses his home movies to take us excruciatingly deep into the emotional train wreck that is his family.

The movie begins with 31-year-old Caouette, living in New York with his boyfriend, receiving the news that his mother, Renee, has overdosed on lithium. Caouette goes back home to Texas, taking us back to where his troubles began.

Here are the facts: Caouette's grandparents, Adolph and Rosemary Davis, were married in 1951. They had a daughter, Renee, who at age 12 was temporarily paralyzed after a fall. Believing the paralysis was psychosomatic, the Davises had doctors give Renee shock therapy for two years - forever altering Renee's personality and leading to years of mental illness and abuse.

Renee was married to Steve, who abandoned her without knowing she was pregnant with Jonathan. Born in 1972, Jonathan suffered for his mom's illness; at age 4 he was put in a foster home, where he was beaten by foster parents. Later, after being adopted by his grandparents, he grew detached from his life. He started looking at it as if it were a dream, intermingled with the cultural icons to which he was attracted - underground movies, musicals, kids' TV and '80s New Wave gay clubs.

Caouette's movie compiles years of home movies, answering-machine messages, still photos, bits of his own short films and clips from his cultural touchstones. He mixes them like a deranged club DJ, sampling madly to illustrate connections between his mother's illness and his self-protective fantasy life. Seeing an 11-year-old Caouette playing Blanche DuBois-style characters is the most chilling home-movie footage since the pre-prison family gathering in "Capturing the Friedmans." But seeing that in a flurry of other images - including the wholesome PBS kids' show "Zoom," Dolly Parton in "Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" and his high-school musical version of "Blue Velvet" - is disturbingly illuminating.

"Tarnation" was made on iMovie, the digital editing program that came with his boyfriend's home iMac, and at times Caouette falls prey to amateurish overreaching. And toward the end, his new footage of his family - Adolph turning paranoid, or Renee desperately trying to keep everyone entertained - approaches the line between unflinching honesty and cruel exploitation. Caouette's undying love for his mother keeps "Tarnation" from crossing that line, but the movie takes us closer than is comfortable.

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