All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
Laura Poitras’ Oscar-nominated documentary focuses on Nan Goldin’s life as a photographer and her stand against the Sackler pharmaceutical dynasty.
I find it bizarre that this latest documentary by Laura Poitras should have already won some twenty-five awards and is likely to add to them in 2023. It is indeed a film with the potential to attract a large audience: that's because it must sound attractive both to those keen to see a biopic about the American photographer and activist Nan Goldin and to the many drawn to the idea of a documentary which is concerned with the opioid crisis in America and which portrays the attempt to hold the Sackler family responsible for their role in bringing that about. These two themes may sound far apart, but it was indeed Goldin who, having herself suffered the consequences of having OxyContin prescribed for her, became a founding member of the group Prescription Addiction Intervention Now (P.A.I.N.) which played a significant role in bringing the Sacklers to account. There are certainly rich possibilities here for the documentary filmmaker, but the blend offered in All the Beauty and the Bloodshed proves an uneasy mix that fails to do justice to either of these two aspects.
The opening footage is concerned with the protest undertaken in 2018 when P.A.I.N. entered the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the site being apt because the Sacklers had been donors there and the action took place in the wing named after them. By starting in this way, the film implies that Goldin’s activism over the Sacklers will be a prime concern since otherwise it seems strange to start Goldin’s story at this late point (she had been born in 1953). It is only after this that the title credit appears, following which All the Beauty and the Bloodshed unfolds in six individually titled sections or chapters. The first of these starts by looking back to Nan Goldin’s childhood, her controlling mother and, most notably, the tragic short life of her older sister Barbara whose sexuality became an issue leading to her death when Nan was only eleven. It was a suicide which the family wanted to pass off as an accident. It is not immediately clear where this is leading but it is gripping – in spite of which we are suddenly pulled back into more footage about further actions by P.A.I.N. and this still as part of that first section.
It is this approach that marks the rest of the film for it continually jumps back and forth between scenes concerning the Sacklers and material about Goldin’s life as a photographer. As many will be aware, she became noted for her depiction of the gay and transgender communities in Boston and later in New York having felt an affinity there due to being herself bisexual. A whole film could be made featuring this earlier material and not least the time when her work, often shown in the form of slideshows, captured the gay subculture of the 1970s and 1980s. But the constant changes in focus rob this of much of its force and it is characteristic of the film that Goldin’s recollections concerning Cookie Mueller who acted for John Waters and who died of Aids are less effective than they deserve to be. That is because they are spread out in bits and pieces over three chapters as well as being intertwined with yet more footage about the Sacklers. Film clips from various movies are incorporated (they include films by Amos Poe, Bette Gordon and Vivienne Dick as well as by Waters), but as featured here they don't add a great deal. Even if Nan Goldin is not the most compelling commentator on her own life, she is at least present to express her own perspective on it and we do see much of her work (the still photographs which give more time to take in details are arguably more effective than the extracts from her slideshows). Certainly, her positive stance towards the LGBTQ+ community will earn applause today but, if that makes it a good time to tell her story, one feels that it could have been done far more effectively than is the case here.
As for the substantial footage given over to the campaign aimed at ensuring that at least some justice was meted out on the Sackler family, the film does gain from the contributions of the author Patrick Radden Keefe whose book about them, Empire of Pain, is a masterpiece. But anyone who has read it will be aware that what is riveting about that book is the length of time that it took to obtain any kind of justice. Every detail adds to the weight of that and, while P.A.I.N.'s contribution most certainly played its part, what we see here is, despite the time given to it, just a late part of the whole story. Anyone who is ignorant of this saga will get little from this film compared to what they can experience from the exceptional impact of Empire of Pain which at once appalls and fascinates. The film does rather better when looking at the wider life story of Nan Goldin, but even then it is easy to imagine a far more compelling treatment of it. Nevertheless, given all those awards that it has received, my belief that this film falls well short of the potential of its material appears to put me in a minority.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Featuring Nan Goldin, Marina Berio, Noemi Bonazzi, Harry Cullen, Megan Kapler, Patrick Radden Keefe, John Mearsheimer, Annatina Miescher, Darryl Pinckney, Alexis Pleus, Mike Quinn, Maggie Smith, Robert Suarez, David Velasco.
Dir Laura Poitras, Pro Howard Gertler, Nan Goldin, Yoni Golijov, John S. Lyons and Laura Poitras, Ph Nan Goldin, Ed Amy Foote, Joe Bini and Brian A. Kates, Music Soundtrack Collective.
Participant/Praxis Films-Altitude Film Entertainment.
117 mins. USA. 2022. US Rel: 2 December 2022. UK Rel: 27 January 2023. Cert. 18.
