All the Beauty and the Bloodshed

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.