Review of All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, directed by Laura Poitras

My fun fact of the day is that when I was originally covering the New York Film Festival last year, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed was one of the movies I was gunning for when I saw it was on the list.

However, due to the timing of the press screenings that year and how I was limited in what kind of movies I was watching during those days I was actually in town, I did not end up getting to see or cover the movie.

I also never had the chance to watch it when I ended up getting an HBO Max subscription, as I was pretty busy during that time and canceled my subscription after I ended up not using it at all. But one day I was really bored in the summer of 2023 and ended up scrolling through Kanopy.

As it turns out, my local library system ends up giving all the library card holders a chance to watch fifteen movies a month through the library’s expense. I rarely use it, although I really should, but this was one of the few times I ended up landing on it as an option to watch movies with. So I was looking through Kanopy one night and saw this was available on it. I pressed play and the rest is history from there.

Onwards with the review!

The story of artist Nan Goldin woven together with the story of the Sackler family and their crimes.

So the documentary weaves together two different stories, as Nan Goldin has been a pivotal figure for the fight against the Sackler family and what they have done. If you’re ever interested in the nitty gritty details of what this case involves, I seriously recommend checking out the book Empire of Pain.

It’s a bit of a big book to get through if you’re not invested in the subject matter (the rise of the Sackler family and how they ended up being a big part of the opioid crisis), but if you are, it is definitely worth picking up at your local library at the very least.

The documentary is split into different sections, but within each one, it focuses on the broader story of the activism behind the Sackler family and the company they funnel their operations through, and then the story of Nan Goldin. It begins with he childhood and how her older sister killed herself, then Nan’s beginnings as an artist.

Nan eventually ends up in New York City and becomes a big part of the art and culture scene in the seventies, and after dropping her pictures off at an art gallery, one of the curators realized the photographs she was taking were unlike anything else at the time.

Essentially, Goldin was documenting people in her real life as-is, versus in structured and artificial moments that can often be seen in photography, especially in portrait and fashion works. Nan began to get broader representation, and one of the interesting aspects of the documentary is how it focuses on her relationship with Cookie Mueller.

Mueller was a big figure during this time as well, and her fall to AIDS is mentioned in the documentary, too. One of the more poignant notes in threading this relationship in this is how it shows how Goldin was surrounded by death when the HIV/AIDS crisis was happening; there were many funerals happening during this time.

All of this is juxtaposed by Goldin leading the activist group P.A.I.N. Goldin was almost one of the many victims to painkillers and the opioid crisis and helped found the group because of it.

The documentary follows them as they lead open protests at art museums that still have the Sackler name, such at the Guggenheim and the MET in New York City. Their protests can be considered flashy, as they throw papers and scatter pill bottles all over the floor, laying down and chanting while they’re down there.

One of Goldin’s tactics later is to threaten to withdraw her work from exhibitions if they continue accepting money from the Sacklers, leading to actual change.

But as the end of the documentary shows, this is going to be a long battle. Not all museums have removed the Sackler name, and there are still many ways their influence still remains supreme throughout the art world.

They aren’t punished for their role in a human rights crisis, nor has the government gone after them.

Overall Thoughts

This is truly a fascinating documentary as this is deeply personal for Goldin. Not only has she lost people during the eighties and nineties, losing many different people who once appeared in her photographs, but the role of the Sackler family in her life is pervasive too.

As seen by the many people shown impacted by the opioid crisis, who lost family members or were almost lost themselves, there was a lot to mull over beyond Goldin’s experience. Goldin’s work has been a defiance of mainstream narratives, and what’s shown in this documentary exposes how personal it is.

And justice, like during the AIDS crisis, many not come anytime soon. Watch this if you haven’t already!

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