All the Beauty and the Bloodshed

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.

The film attempts a profile of a photographer, but without laying groundwork to make the case for why she is, in thee filmmaker's perspective, a great artist. Viewers are shown a few slideshows of her work, images that are often uninteresting on their own -- without first being contextualized -- and then sequences of B-roll of the photographer shuffling around her studio and directing installations of her work. I got the the impression that if I were already enamored with the photographer, then I might have watched these sequences with rapt attention. Instead, knowing next to nothing about the artist, I found them boring -- and this was all within the first 15 minutes!

There are vastly more powerful films about photographers, searing works about the opioid epidemic, beautiful films about artistic process. This film intersects with each of those genres, but in an insubstantial and unmemorable way.

The buzz around this work -- and there is a lot of buzz -- seems rooted in the celebrity of the filmmaker and its subject. That's ironic, for the film appears to seek its power from themes larger than any individual, yet winds up relevant only if underpinned by the fame surrounding its maker and central character. Like the reviewer here PedroPires90 wrote ("Unfocused," March 3, 2023), "honestly it was hard to find the strength to finish it."

There's a family who had legalised addiction, who pushed their products to administer more affliction, once you're trapped it's hard to leave, there's a good chance that you'll grieve, if you know someone, they'll need more than benediction.

A wonderful piece of factual storytelling focused around Nan Goldin's pursuit of justice and recompense for those helplessly hooked on Oxycontin, a drug that was peddled without remorse by people who thought they were above the law. The film also explores in some detail the life of Nan, her career as an artist, the wild and colourful characters she got to know in NYC, and the often crazy things she found herself doing, as well as her life as a child and the sister she lost.

The movie "All the beauty and the bloodshed" is a beautiful documentary that covers two aspects of the life of the American photographer Nan Goldin. Her fight against the Sackler/Purdue pharmaceutical empire, the creator of OxyContin that triggered the opioid crisis, and also her journey of sexual freedom, drugs, and rock'n'roll spanning from the 70s until 2000.

Once again, experienced director Laura Poitras sensitively captures Nan's struggle with psychological survival, drug abuse, and determination to fight against the companies that influenced her drug addiction and the deaths of over 400K people. And we follow Nan's journey only through her photography lens. It's simply touching to witness her passing through the AIDS epidemic, the loss of her older sister to suicide, and the opium epidemic.

Nan's spirit life without judgment or traditionalism is very inspired.

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.