However, all this makes for a dull movie. I wanted to see a film about Goldin, The photographer. Yes, there are brief cutaways to Nan’s contemporaries or near-contemporaries like Peter Hujar (“Candy Darling on Her Deathbed”) and David Wojnarowicz (“History Keeps Me Awake at Night”). Still, these moments only give you a taste of what the film could have been.
Do not be misled. “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” is NOT a movie about Nan Goldin, the artist. The legendary photographer who inspired the Ally Sheedy character Lucy Berliner in director Lisa Cholodenko’s “High Art.”
No.
Director Laura Poitras’s movie is about Nan Goldin the activist.
If you are clear on this, go ahead and see the movie. If you were hoping for a documentary on the art of photography à la John Maloof and Charlie Siskel‘s “Finding Vivian Maier,” this movie is not for you.
Goldin, whose photos were reproduced by photographer JoJo Whilden for “High Art,” was, like the character she inspired, a heroin addict. Living in New York during the late seventies and early eighties, she was at the center of the AIDS epidemic, and her photographs are a document of that era and the friends she lost. She eventually kicked the habit. As the horrific effects of the massively overprescribed drug Oxycontin became known in the early 2000s, she became a tireless advocate for the drug’s victims and a tireless foe of the infamous Sackler Family whose company Purdue Pharma churned out the drug in massive quantities.
Goldin’s trump card was the Sackler Family’s love of art, and she refused to allow her work to be shown in any museum with the Sackler Family as sponsors. It worked. From the Metropolitan Museum in New York to The Louvre in Paris, the Sackler name was removed and continues to be removed from museums worldwide.
Masel tov Nan! However, all this makes for a dull movie. I wanted to see a film about Goldin, The photographer. Yes, there are brief cutaways to Nan’s contemporaries or near-contemporaries like Peter Hujar (“Candy Darling on Her Deathbed”) and David Wojnarowicz (“History Keeps Me Awake at Night”). Still, these moments only give you a taste of what the film could have been. When I want to see a movie about the Sackler Family, I will rewatch “Dopesick,” Hulu’s superb miniseries with Michael Stuhlbarg’s riveting performances as Richard Sackler and Kaitlyn Dever’s tour de force as one of his many victims.
“All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” wants it both ways, but for all its good intentions, it ends up falling between two stools and deceives its audience in the process.
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