Toute la beauté et le sang versé

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.

I read the review by CinemaSerf and had similar reaction: I had expected much more of an exposé of the Sacklers. The documentary assumed that viewers would just take the side of the protesters against Sackler, but anyone with an enquiring mind might just wonder what the evidence was. I was in the fortunate position of having read Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe, which does a thorough and gripping account of the origins of the Sackler family and all their dodgy dealings, pushing opioid drugs to physicians, and recommending alarmingly high doses while arguing that only certain types of people got addicted. Once you have that background, any doubts about Nan Goldin's activism are dispelled, and you look in awe at what she's done. In effect, this film, which is quirky and relies mainly on vision and sound rather than words to convey messages, complements the scholarly verbal account in Empire of Pain. The Sackler story is only part of it - it sits in the context of Nan Goldin's remarkable life and career as photographer documenting the underground life of unconventional people after she escaped her dysfunctional family. It's an important film documenting an era in history, and showing how individuals can take on the rich and powerful. Nan features in Patrick Radden Keefe's book, and he features in her film, but I think that if you put the two together, it's perfect and the whole is greater than the parts.

Laura Poitras' remarkable documentary ALL THE BEAUTY AND BLOODSHED which combines multiple story-lines into an incredible portrait of artist and activist, Nan Goldin. On the surface it appears as though the focus is on Goldin's attempt to bring to the public's attention the Sackler family's role as pharmaceutical kingpins during the opiod crisis. It begins with faux doctor's prescriptions and pill bottles raining down in a toney art gallery named after the Sacklers. It's a protest by Goldin's group P. A. I. N. (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now).

It's a powerful prologue, but, Poitras isn't simply interested in an advocacy documentary film here. It's a dense and intense exploration of Goldin, the person and the artist, and how her personal journey informed her activism.

Goldin is interviewed at length, and her personal writings and art are revealed in the most intimate manner. Goldin's photography evolved naturally. She was driven to document her own life and, from there, depicted an entire underground scene that had rarely been exposed to not only the art world - but, to the larger public. Goldin's fluid sexuality brought her to Provincetown and later the Burroughs of New York City, photographing everything and everyone she came in contact with. She never intentionally was putting together a portfolio - it just happened. The photographs are as private and personal as could be. Goldin never shied away from her innermost relationships, nor that of her circle of friends. That frankness is what eventually brought her to the recognition by the art world - even as it scandalized many of them. When AIDS hit her community, Goldin learned a lesson from the Act Up movement that carried on to her founding of P. A. I. N..

While all of that played out (eventually) in the public's eye, Poitras reveals Goldin's personal family life. Her strained relationship with her parents, and, most poignantly, of that with her sister who was institutionalized. Her sibling's story shows how a young woman's 'rebelliousness' can be struck down by the system and a forced dependency on drugs and a form of enslavement. It's something that Goldin carries with her to this day, including her own bout with opiods.

ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED carries a lot on its plate. Poirtras' great achievement here is that no section of the movie feels out of place, nor does any part of it feel in any manner slighted. It's all of a piece melding Goldin's intensely personal quest, art and sense of social purpose.

Breathtaking.

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed can join Fire of Love in the club of Oscar-nominated documentaries from 2022 that would have been more worthy winners than Navalny. It's admittedly a small club, but I feel like both of those movies have moments that demonstrate documentary filmmaking at its best.

In the case of All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, it's probably the final 15-20 minutes that shines the brightest. It can be a slow and somewhat uneven feeling documentary at some points, but it builds to some phenomenal and emotionally hard hitting final scenes. The rest of the documentary still tends to hit far more often than it misses, but I did get the sense it may have been a tiny bit too long, and while I respect the choice not to tie together its two primary narratives more explicitly, part of me was waiting for them to collide more directly at a point. Still, leaving some of that up to the viewer felt like a deliberate choice, and I can respect that.

It follows Nan Goldin, with the film both recounting her life story from the 1950s to the 1990s and detailing her activism against the Sackler family and their role in the opioid epidemic in the 2010s. The latter might be more interesting narratively, but the former has the more interesting presentation, seeing as Goldin's an accomplished artist/photographer, and the documentary frequently relies on her work to serve as visuals.

It's a heavy and often sad documentary, dealing with mental illness, addiction, corruption, censorship, the AIDS crisis, discrimination, and domestic violence. It might be upsetting to some viewers as a result, but I think it was best not to pull punches (so long as people know what they're in for before deciding to watch it). It's a largely powerful documentary that I think will stick with me. Not perfect, but it has some amazing sequences that were very striking and moving.

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.