'All the Beauty and the Bloodshed' Review: A Polarizing Portrait of a True Queer Icon
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
NR
Runtime: 1 Hour and 53 Minutes
Production Companies: Praxis Films, Participant
Distributor: NEON
Director: Laura Poitras
Cast: Nan Goldin
Release Date: November 23, 2022
In Theaters Only
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed is an epic, emotional, and interconnected story about the internationally renowned artist and activist Nan Goldin. It’s told through her slideshows, intimate interviews, ground-breaking photography, and rare footage of her personal fight to hold the Sackler family accountable for the overdose crisis.
It’s hard to top an iconic piece of cinema like Citizenfour. The way that filmmaker Laura Poitras captured Edward Snowden in his refugee state in real-time—being hunted down by the U.S. government—was revolutionary. I’d even call it essential cinema. How does one follow that up? How would one showcase yet another portrait of a captivating subject whose mighty voice and history must be shared with the world? Look no further than photographer-turned-activist Nan Goldin in this incredibly stunning and harrowing portrait of a resilient individual. They say heroes come in all shapes and sizes; sometimes they come with ginger hair and a camera.
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed has Poitras shining the spotlight on photographer Nan Goldin and her complex life in a manner I’ve never seen in a doc before. Through Goldin’s enriching voiceover along with rich archival photographs and footage from her lens, Poitras and Goldin transport the viewer to the late 20th century, chronicling Goldin’s career as a queer woman in NYC during the AIDS epidemic.
Amid the magnification of Goldin’s fascinating life, the film also captures her efforts to dismantle the wealthy Sackler family—owners of Purdue Pharma, which produces OxyContin—for their participation in the overdose crisis that affected countless people around the world, including her and her loved ones. Goldin expresses her past as an opioid addict with raw detail and links the addiction to OxyContin to the Sacklers. With Sackler’s wealth being bigger than the 250,000 deaths their company caused, this criminal pharmaceutical company became a major philanthropic donor to museums like the MET, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Guggenheim, to name a few. Goldin dons an activist hat, seeking justice and getting anything that had the Sackler name off museum corridors. Poitras's lens showcases the formation of the group Prescription Addiction Intervention Now (P.A.I.N.) and their fascinating activist efforts to make the Sack-ler-shit family pay.
Every interview and account associated with the opioid crisis enlarges both the scope of their efforts and the dour reality of drug addiction. The story quietly becomes an intense thriller where the war between P.A.I.N. and the Sacklers becomes two-sided. Similar to Citizenfour, Poitras's real-time footage that intimately follows Goldin and her P.A.I.N. team is a riveting affair as you root for this queer queen to make the rich pay for their crimes.
Divided into chapters to give Goldin’s story a novelesque feel, this two-headed beast of a doc throws you in the passenger seat on an awe-inspiring, larger-than-life odyssey. Goldin’s restored video footage and photography are bold, raw, personal, and difficult to shy your eyes away from. Paired with narration detailing her experience in the LGBTQ underground community, the snapshots provide a vivid picture of the era she describes. The tight editing gives both time settings their due diligence, emphasizing the tribulations of Goldin’s history. Her incredible story becomes a vivid mirage of cause and effect, subtly painting a larger picture to discuss addiction and the root of Goldin’s anger and dedication.
That said, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed is a polarizing film. Ever so often you get a sensational doc that illustrates a figure’s fascinating life and their impact that walks on eggshells. This feature is a prime example of a raw portrait. Out of the many documentary features I’ve seen this year, this is the one doc to completely engross me through its subject and its life experience. Next to Flee—a perfect doc that I regret not writing about—All the Beauty and the Bloodshed is easily one of the best documentaries I've ever seen in my life. It’s a cinematic odyssey experience that needs to be seen on a big screen.
Half autobiographical portrait, half thriller, 100% cinema. Laura Poitras’s All the Beauty and the Bloodshed is a profound and engrossing cinematic experience of human resilience. Capturing the form of storytelling through art and the strength that comes to power through art, this larger-than-life portrait of Nan Goldin is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. It encompasses an incredible person’s impact and legacy, earning her the title of "icon". This is truly a great documentary of a queer icon in every sense of the word.
