GoMovieReviews Rating: ★★★★
Rated: R18+ (High impact sexualised imagery)
Directed by: Laura Poitras
Produced by: Laura Poitras, Nan Goldin, Howard Gertler, John Lyons, Yoni Golijov
Composer: Soundwalk Collective
Photography: Nan Goldin
Featuring: Nan Goldin
“Droll thing life is – – that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself – – that comes too late – – a crop of inextinguishable regrets.”
‘Heart of Darkness’, by Joseph Conrad
Nan Goldin was born into, ‘the banality and grip of suburbia.’
After her sister, Barbara, was institutionalised by her parents, where Barbara eventually committed suicide, leaving behind in her notebook the quote from Joseph Conrad, written above, Nan began to understand what denial was.
Nan was also sent to an orphanage when her mother couldn’t cope.
It was the beginning of losing trust in herself and what that means.
All The Beauty And The Bloodshed is about Nan’s life, as an artist and world renowned photographer, and her activism as a founding member of P.A.I.N (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now); her mission to remove the Sackler family from the art world, for galleries to refuse their donations and to take their family name from the walls.
The Sackler family made their fortune from prescription drugs like Diazepine and later, OxyContin – a drug that provoked an opioid crisis and a drug Nan herself become addicted to after being prescribed OxyContin after surgery. Like so many others.
Nan’s fight against the Sackler Family and their company, Purdue Pharma, becomes the cumulation of her life’s work and a focus of the documentary.
The documentary was filmed over two years as director Laura Poitras (Citizen Four (2014)) visited Nan at home.
The film is made up of voice over from Nan herself and the images her life’s work in slideshows.
An exhibit that repeats throughout the documentary is, ‘The Ballad of Sexual Dependency.’
Nan says, ‘The wrong things are kept private in society, and that destroys people. All my work is about stigma, whether it’s suicide, mental illness, gender.’
The link back to her childhood and loss of her sister shown to be foundational in Nan’s work.
Her photographs are of her friends, her early work of drag queens in the early seventies, in Boston. And that’s what really grabbed me about this film, her amazing work: the artistry in the blur, the highlights, the eyes and coy smile. It’s like the very atmosphere is captured in a photograph.
Her vision is described in the film as her taking photos from, ‘our side.’
Because her people were the ones who only felt safe coming out at night.
But they didn’t feel like the marginalised, they thought everyone else was.
There’s parties and drugs and love. Nan does anything to buy film. And documents it all.
Set to the background of this provocative work is Nan describing her life, her fascinating and sometimes dark journey and she’s very candid, opening up about times in her life she’s never spoken about, like her time as a sex worker – ‘it’s very hard work’ – but feels now is the time.
It’s an emotive film.
There’s nothing flashy and there’s no layering over the focus of the film because Nan’s life is a powerful story. There’s just more of her in the music, many songs her suggestion while also bringing NYC group Soundwalk Collective to create the score.
I found her powerful because she’s able to say, ‘I’m nervous.’
Nan has a tremor at times, but her voice remains measured because what she has to say is important.
The film shows a difficult upbringing, that essentially stole her voice that was then given back to her in the form of a camera, to capture her life, to give her a reason to be there.
And then, her art giving voice to others, to save lives.
For me, I was captured by those slide shows, the people in the photos like characters in the movie of Nan’s life.
It’s a heavy story, but the telling is simple, measured and driven not by the production, but what felt like Nan herself.
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