Once again at the Watershed, a small Bristol cinema, I went to see the new production by Laura Poitras, All the beauty and the bloodshed. In this documentary film released with a bang, the director offers a narration in fragments of PAIN’s fight against the pharmaceutical industry Purdue Pharma, run by the Sackler family and responsible for the opioid crisis in the United States.
While she customarily makes poignant documentaries, cutting into the cantankerous face behind the scenes of society, her audience may never get used to receiving her documentaries, all of which have the effect of electroshocks. .
If in All the beauty and the bloodshed the director tackles the acute question of pharmaceutical companies, she does so above all by depicting the life of Nan Goldin; a life represented as a composition of photographs and fights, the advent of the two being intimately linked and intertwined to offer better resonances.
American photographer and activist, Nan Goldin is a founding member of the advocacy group PAIN, an organization founded in 2017 in response to the opioid crisis and protesting in particular against the production and distribution of Oxycontin by the Sackler family company. At the beginning of her commitments, Nan Goldin began to film the actions of PAIN, some members of the organization having the ambition to develop a documentary giving voice to their fight. Director Laura Poitras then became involved in the project, her documentary then becoming a work produced both about and with Nan Goldin.
At the crossroads of documentary and biography, All the beauty and the bloodshed looks more like a series of portraits: a portrait of Goldin, a portrait of the issues and power dynamics in Goldin’s life, a portrait of a fight against Purdue Pharma after Goldin herself had fought an addiction with oxycontin.
Bringing these two women together to bring a single voice has in fact a natural legitimacy: Goldin like Poitras are women artists whose works and their publications are constantly at risk, vis-à-vis the societal canons they question, and impose an entire dedication to the defended causes. Both in fact make minor voices speak in their arts and show bodies saturated, wounded and rendered precarious by the voices of American imperialism. Poitras illustrates these themes through My Country, My Country (2006) where she made the voice of Doctor Riyadh al-Adhadh heard against the American occupation of Iraq, or via Citizenfour (2014), documentary made about and with Edward Snowden; and Goldin through his photographs of the lives of a member of the American queer community, of his sexuality, of lives affected by the AIDS virus and living on the edge of society, of his family life after the suicide of his sister suffering from – consideration of psychiatric authorities.
All the beauty and the bloodshed manages to do two things: describe PAIN’s fight against the Sackler family and propose a collaborative work of art, whose narration is an association questioning the foundations of American identity, and what makes up the unity of a nation.
All the beauty and the bloodshed thus bears witness to the fact that the United States is turning into a pedestal to promote the enrichment of companies such as Purdue Pharma, through abuse of power, fierce psychological brutality and thus sweeping away any consideration of justice. Purdue Pharma’s imperialism of sick bodies, addiction-ridden minds, and suffocated lines of flight continues to be exploited for 121 minutes. And the parallels drawn with the fragments of life of Goldin, portrayed by Poitras, underline the gap that can widen between hegemonic forces and local centers of resistance. By inserting photographs taken by Goldin into the narration of the documentary, alternating between festive and more intimate or dark photos, Poitras succeeds in bringing back to the center of considerations what this American society which brandishes justice and freedom should look like.
All the beauty and the bloodshed then brings together in a logical mosaic interviews with members of PAIN, fragments of Goldin’s documentation of his own life, the responsible faces of the Sackler family reacting to testimonies and complaints during a session organized on Zoom, videos of the actions of BREAD in various museums (The Louvre, the MET, the Guggenheim Museum). Because the documentary/portrait of Goldin and Poitras also seeks to make visible the deep hypocrisy of the philanthropism of the Sacklers, who financed many museums and exhibitions, and whose name was then engraved everywhere. To this insidious philanthropism are compared the independent and courageous arts of Goldin and Poitras, far from funding.
In addition to being an enlightening and pointed report on the opioid affair, All the beauty and the bloodshed succeeds in questioning the components of a nation’s identity, and takes up the challenge of representing social and political struggles through artistic expression. Awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Festival, All the beauty and the bloodshedby sublimating the convergence of Goldin and Poitras, is an ode to resistance.
