All the Beauty and the Bloodshed

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.

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.

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.

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.