Jason Holliday enters the screen with his towering presence, larger-than-life persona, armed with great charm and wit as he navigates through his story. Holliday is a performer through and through, and he embarks on something as complex as piecing together his own life journey and expressing it, in the span of Portrait of Jason. He enters the almost two-hour film about himself with the power to strip himself and his life bare in front of a camera and an audience. The film is peppered with multiple impressions and nightclub pieces that Holliday performs on the behest of the ones behind the camera. All of these snippets of method acting that Portrait of Jason tries to contribute to the persona (one of the many personae his life is made of) he's trying to portray this particular night, a flamboyant, raw, emotional, and real male performer. But as a viewer, you wonder, what is real? What is his real?
There is so much said, so much to be put into context, in this two-hour film. Here's a black, gay man, an object, so to say, of intrigue and critique of the filmmaker. There is something about how he speaks of continually being in control of other women, predominantly white women, and in a chilling and ironic contrast, we see Shirley Clarke, a white woman exercising her control over the narrative of Holliday's life. Jason Holliday is victimized and yet deemed powerful; he's crying, but is there any grief in reality? An elaborate power struggle to determine who is going to control how the film will turn out is the most definitely real part of the film. These elements working together, clashing against each other, all determine the story (the content is all there, but how is the viewer going to be fed it?) with the elements' interaction with each other.
It is so easy to be suspicious of each action and be simultaneously drawn in by the constant flow of charisma on screen. The reason is that while it's cinematically quite simple, with it being literally about one man with a drink in his hand telling the camera about his life; the story that it is trying to convey is where the film's complexity lies.
For a brief moment, you, as a viewer, feel a break in the "performance", you see a little bit of that mask of an extravagant, expressive and exuberant male performer slip away when he starts crying and apologizing. Carl Lee then presents himself as this brash antagonist who is having none of Holliday's breakdown. The viewer is still reeling from this man's harsh words towards another, clearly upset man, and then we see Holliday wipe away his tears like they never truly existed in the first place. It makes you wonder if his grief is all part of the performance, which the filmmaker and even Jason Holliday are apparent in conducting. Then you suddenly recall how easily Holliday worked over similarly difficult discussions, like a man's heart attack and even his personal endeavours, without showing any sadness or remorse.
The story told and how it has been done have an aim- to enthral and disturb. When he is laughing or crying, Jason Holliday manages to keep the viewers enraptured with tales that neither conceal nor reveal. Although the film does its best to depict this tortured man, it feels intrusive to assume a position where we have such open and harrowing access to Holliday's vulnerabilities. Yes, it is consensual, but there is something about how Shirley Clarke continues to film when Holliday progressively becomes influenced by the alcohol and drugs he is consuming that has a likeness to the paparazzi's handling of grief of a public figure, Shirley Clarke being quite simply, paparazzi with some dignity.
However, during these scenes, the intent to unsettle the viewers with its cinematography cannot be overlooked. With barely any cuts in order to indicate continuity while building tension within the viewers, Shirley Clarke wants to involve the audience in the filmmaking by reminding them constantly of the production process. If it weren't for a limit to the film reels they had (a count of the reels also immersing us in the filming and creating some distance from the monologue of sorts taking place), I believe Shirley Clarke wouldn't have had any of the cuts in the first place. There were moments in the cuts which would have revealed possibly a different persona of Holliday, him pouring a drink, lighting a joint, or some brief comment to give us more. Another interesting creative decision Shirley makes is by playing with the focus of the camera. I relate every shift, every blur of the focus, to the slurring and blurring of Jason Holliday himself due to his increasing high. This is Clarke's way of making her truth film immersive and engaging.
Lastly, I think something interesting to observe was Clarke's insistence on the way the film ended. Usually, a conclusion to a documentary is sought after, defining the intention of the film or giving an insight into the subject of the film. However, Portrait of Jason doesn't seek to satisfy the audience. Maybe there was no more reel left to film on, or perhaps it was another creative decision of Clarke's. Whatever may be the case, Clarke concluded the film on nothing concrete but instead on a moment where Holliday seemed to have reached a "break," his persona slipping away, or rather him having reached an exhaustive end to his performance. Portrait of Jason left Jason Holliday just as enigmatic as he was at the beginning of the documentary, if not more.
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