All the Beauty and the Bloodshed

It still amazes me how evolved the documentary film genre has become over the years.

The amount of freedom you can experiment within a documentary has become more noticeable. In this one particularly, you see a bunch of different styles and even story branches.

There is a mix of themes such as topical activism, what can be classified as art, a determination for justice and accountability, a woman's struggling life and the power of family.

The central character I had no idea about and we certainly got a thorough look into her life both as an artist and as a daughter.

It felt very definitive as I felt it gave you the perfect portrait of this person's upbringing and how certain traumas lead to this groundbreaking change in the art world.

I also liked at how they told each aspect of her life in a parallel style. The timings of shift to a different part of her life felt well-timed and gave us a very satisfying conclusion.

This was pretty interesting and while I wasn't overwhelmed by it, I can see others feeling that way.

It's well made, the content and imagery is strong and the central character was not afraid to open herself up to her life story.

This documentary about Nan Goldin and her battles throughout her life--personally and professionally--is many pronged with New York as the background. She was part of the art movement in the 1980's when AIDS started to invade that scene unabated since the administration of the time felt it was only a gay disease and would not be addressed. Her anger could have been surmised as the beginning there, but then we got a glimpse of her life growing up with the poor treatment her sister got by her parents. Things progressed from there. Her activism developed in the 1980's and continued into the age of Purdue Pharmacy's creation and rampant spread of oxycodone. The documentary may seem to be a bit of a hodgepodge of memories, but when you understand that her anger was developing almost from the moment she was born, you can understand how heartfelt her concern was for those who died around her. This was nominated as Best Feature Documentary for the Oscars It is an uncomfortable yet quite informative watch.

As "All the Beauty and the Bloodshed" (2022 release; 118 min.) opens, it is "March 10, 2018", and a group of activists is staging a protest at the Met, more particularly the Sackler Wing. We then go to "1. Merciless Logic" as Nan Goldin starts talking about her early youth, and how her sister Barbara commits suicide when Nan was only 7. At this point we are less than 10 minutes into the film.

Couple of comments: this is the latest from well respected documentarian Laura Poitras ("Citizenfour"). Here she brings us a nuanced portrait and assessment of photographer Nan Goldin, best known for documenting the NY underground scene in the 70s and 80s. At the same time Poitras looks back at the mysterious suicide of Nan's sister Barbara in 1965. And last but not least, Poitras follows Goldin and other members of the activist group P. A. I. N. in their attempts to hold the Sackler family which owns Purdue Company, manufacturer of Valium and Oxycontin, responsible for the opioid crisis in this country (Goldin herself is a survivor of Oxycontin addiction). The beauty of this documentary consisting of 7 chapters is how these three subjects are woven together, with Goldin herself narrating much of it. I was absolutely fascinated by it all, and I am already going on record that this documentary is a shoo-in to get a Best Documentary Oscar nomination.

"All the Beauty and the Bloodshed" premiered at last Fall's Venice Film Festival to immediate critical acclaim, winning the festival's top prize along the way. It is currently rated 93% Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, and for very good reasons. I see a LOT of documentaries, and surely this is one of the very best, if not THE best, documentaries of 2022, and also one of the very best movies of 2002, period. The documentary opened this weekend at my local arthouse theater here in Cincinnati. The Tuesday evening screening where I saw this at was attended very nicely (I counted about 25-30 people). If you like a top-notch documentary, I'd readily suggest you check this out, and draw your own conclusion.

You would think, as an enterpreneur who had created/developed this product, as you saw that it was contributing to 100s of thousands of deaths throughout the world, you would attempt to do something, anything, to reign in the misuse and misapplication of the product. Maybe you would put some money into combatting the misuse and consequences of misuse, of your product. But no, the family put money, lots of it, into entertainment for the wealthy, the educated, the priviliged few who attend the Louvre, the Met, the Guggenheim, etc. After all, they believed "no one is forcing them to misuse our product". The film is powerful. It shows the power of people who come together to fight evil and apathy, in spite of themselves. I enjoyed the film and I would have joined them on their march for justice.

Another important story to tell but the film itself is lacking some of that connection I'm expecting to feel.

The choice to weave Nan's personal, artistic and activism journey all together is an interesting but risky one because it weakens the delivery on either one of them.

Personally, it feels like the film is putting Nan on a pedestal, instead of where she was most of her life, the dark, dirty and forgotten edges of the city. As a result, her on screen persona sometimes feels even more out of touch than a fictional character.

For what it's worth, the film comes back to the title in the end where it ties All The Beauty And The Bloodshed that Nan has seen throughout her whole life with who she is and what she is trying to achieve now. But it's just a little bit too late for my liking.