The central focus is Francesca and the questions are numerous upon learning that she’s gone, that she will not be giving direct insight into her life. There are only the photographs she took, the videos she shot, the diary entries she wrote, some of which appear onscreen, showing a burgeoning great writer, if indeed she had thought of becoming that, if she lived.
For most of these haunting 83 minutes, we wonder what led her to suicide, and how she did it. She was the second child of the Woodmans, who didn’t want anything to interrupt their art. If she and Charlie wanted to do something, the answer they got is that Betty had to fire the kiln or George had to work on another painting. They hadn’t even thought about having children, yet here were Francesca and Charlie. Did they consciously refuse to acknowledge that they had children? Was their art truly more important than their children? They involved in their children in all their artistic pursuits, yanking their children out of school before the year was over, to explore different places, to be inspired, to have new ideas to push into their art. Were they selfish? Should they have paid more attention to their children? Did Francesca become a photographer because she was looking for approval from her parents for becoming an artist herself?
The questions keep coming, and The Woodmans is a rare documentary for engaging viewers so continuously. As we look at those nude photographs, of Francesca using her body to create, more questions emerge not just about who Francesca was as an artist, what drove her, but what we think about the photographs. How do we feel about them? We work this out in our minds as we continue to ask questions of this family, seeking answers that don’t easily come. We can’t know truly what Francesca’s state of mind was, and neither could her parents or her brother or her childhood friend or her classmates at the Rhode Island School of Design. All they know is what they saw of her, what they experienced, molded through their prisms, who they are as people and as artists. Her diary entries come closest to understanding who she was. She was intense, she knew what she wanted from her art and she strove to create it. Her genetic makeup alone and being raised by her artistic parents showed that she had to become an artist, but there’s no clear-cut answer as to why she was an artist. I still don’t know why I became a writer. Artists are seized by something and they follow it. That’s the best I can come up with.
This Kino Lorber DVD comes with three trailers, two for documentaries about two other artists, classical pianist Glenn Gould (“Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould”) and Harry Nilsson (“Who is Harry Nilsson (And Why is Everybody Talkin’ About Him?)”). The other trailer is for Mademoiselle Chambon. These are other examples of the wide-ranging interests the label has in its releases.
Art has so many risks and those who pursue it acknowledge and face those risks. A lot of time has to be invested in this, and why Betty and George had children if they were in such pursuit of their art is the big question that looms over this. But it happened, and all that can really be known is the aftermath. From us, snap judgments, considered thoughts, and ponderous analyses are all welcome here. There’s no right answer. Just like art. It’s a dark world to explore.
