Review: All the Beauty And The Bloodshed

Image courtesy of Neon.

Laura Poitras' documentary "All the Beauty and the Bloodshed" chronicles the career and colorful life of artist Nan Goldin, whose traumatic experiences shaped both her art and activism. The film opens with Goldin describing her upbringing in the repressed 1950s in Massachusetts, and how her older sister was essentially swept under the rug by her family after having discovered her sexuality, being placed in mental institutions on numerous occasions before finally committing suicide.

Goldin's relationship with her sister appears to be a pivotal moment in her life, so it's a bit surprising when the subject mostly drops until the film's final chapter, when it becomes obvious why the subject has been brought back up, especially in the face of all the work and political activity that Goldin undertook during the 1970s through the present, which makes up the bulk of the picture.

Goldin's career and the downtown New York scene of the late 1970s - which features everyone from John Water regular Cookie Mueller to no-wave filmmakers like Vivienne Dick - make for some fascinating viewing, and we get a glimpse into what prompted Goldin to photograph New York's underbelly, eventually paving the way for her most famous photo collection slideshow, "The Ballad of Sexual Dependency."

To say she endured struggles is an understatement, from the death of her sister and an abusive relationship with a man to losing many of her good friends to AIDS during the 1980s - a time during which her activism bloomed amid that health crisis - and even a brief stint as a sex worker.

All of her struggles and photographic work - plus her bit parts in no-wave movies and gigs as a bartender and stripper - weave in and out of the film's central story, which involves Goldin's addiction to opioids following a medical procedure and recovery, an experience that pushed her to get involved in efforts to bring down the Sackler family, who became rich by collaborating with Big Pharma to push opioids - especially oxycontin - on the masses.

Keep in mind that Goldin was a respected artist whose work was frequently seen in galleries around New York City, but also London and other places. The Sackler family had a tradition of making huge donations to art museums in New York and around the world, often having entire galleries within the museums with their names on them. 

Therefore, Goldin put her career and life's work at risk by protesting these museums - staging elaborate events during which she and other activists would lie down on the floor, playing dead, or drop fake prescriptions from the top floor of a gallery, causing them to drift down like confetti to the floors below, or scatter prescription bottles in museum fountains - in the hopes of encouraging the institutions to no longer accept Sackler money and, ultimately, remove their names from the museums.

Her attempts to take down the Sacklers were also a matter of good timing as others began to question the family's involvement in an epidemic that claimed the lives of thousands of Americans annually. The film interviews Patrick Radden Keefe, who wrote an investigate piece for The New Yorker, who admits that he initially wrote off Goldin's activism on the matter as something that was going nowhere. But he and Goldin both recognized that they were making strides once they started being followed.

Poitras has received acclaim for her other work - her Edward Snowden doc, "Citizenfour," drew raves, and although I liked that one too, I had some qualms about what I believed to be a slight glossing over of its subject's flaws - but her latest is easily her finest work. 

"All the Beauty and the Bloodshed" isn't just a typical advocacy documentary. It sprinkles in compelling bits of personal history - set against the backdrop of an era and art movement that never fails to stimulate the imagination - with its subject's activism, all the while doing a substantive deep dive into her life's work. This has been a very good year for documentaries and this - along with the stunning "Fire of Love" - is among the very best of them.