First of all, just to clarify, Tarnation is not a fictional movie, but a documentary... "this stuff really happened". I would not recommend this film for an nice afternoon of entertainment. However, it does have a lot to say about mental illness, and the part played by family and in many cases, the medical community in creating and keeping the insanity going.

The film is written, directed and appeared in by Jonathan Caouette and involves his mother who has had a lifelong history of going in and out of mental institutions starting at about age 12. My mother was never actually in a mental instituation but displayed bizare behavior during my early childhood up till when I was in my late teens and even after. So it feels like Jonathan and I have something in common.

In addition, we have in common that we are both concerned about our own stability and can "feel our mother's in our heads". I can find some reassurance in the fact that, by the time my mother was my age, she was well advanced in her strangeness, and in fact was pretty much over it by the time she was about 6 years old than I currently am. If it is genetic in cause, since I am adopted, there is less likelihood for "inherited insanity" for me. Even so, I can relate to that feeling of not totally trusting one's ability to hang on to sanity.

Another issue raised by this film is to what extent issues of this nature are "passed on" and where they originate. My mother's family has a history of at minimum very harsh critical (self and others) people with big tempers. While watching Jonathan's film, it occurred to me that there was something a bit odd about his grandmother as well...her behavior being sadly similar in some ways to his mother's. In addition at one point the grandfather becomes angry and refuses to talk to Jonathan, at least on film. Admittedly the questions being asked could have been sensitive, but his reaction seemed a bit much. I am not sure Jonathan would agree with me, but I know that for myself, and I suspect in his case as well, we will never know the entire truth. Were our mothers flunks or is there a family "tradition" of abuse as his mother insisted.

Such questioning and uncertainly simply becomes part of the fabric of our lifes and we each come to grips with it in our own ways. I recommend this film to anyone interested in family dynamics, especially dysfunction, either due to experiencing it, or wanting to understand what we who HAVE experienced it go throught.