IT’S ALL POLITICS

Oscar-nominated ‘All the Beauty and the Bloodshed’ documents the ‘artwashing’ of pill-pushing pharma family

BY MICHAEL J. CASEY

Boston suburbs, with a mother terrified of what the neighbors might think and a sister with a secret that would consume her. It was a world Goldin would leave without turning her back on, even as she developed her true identity and forged another family.

That was in New York’s Bowery during the ’70s and ’80s. Drugs were everywhere. So were sex and subversion. Goldin captured it all with her camera. It “was a time of black and white vertical photographs,” Goldin recounts, and hers were anything but. They were like motion pictures frozen in time. “No one photographs their own life,” a curator told her. Goldin thought otherwise.

Most artists weave themselves into their art. Looking at the photos Goldin took, you wonder: How could she not? Poitras wisely turns most of All the Beauty and the Bloodshed over to Goldin’s photographs, presenting the bulk of the doc’s runtime as one of

Goldin’s slideshows backed by Goldin’s narration.

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed is a rallying cry for justice through demonstration and creativity. One such demonstration involves turning a quote from a Sackler family member on its head to create a moment of beauty so arresting even the demonstrators appreciate it on an aesthetic level. It’s not the only instance of Goldin leading a protest with a visual quality worthy of the gallery in which it takes place. What luck, Poitras must have thought as she captured her protagonist at work. It’s not every day you find an honest human being with a compelling story to tell, who can make it beautiful along the way.