The Medicine of Matthew Barney
Drawing Restraint 9
IFC Films
Written and Directed by Matthew Barney
Music by Bjork
Producers: Barbara Gladstone and Matthew Barney
Attention: Spoiler alert!
Last night, Linda and I saw Drawing Restraint 9, the first feature film release arrival of Matthew Barney, art world auteur, Cremaster craftsman, and boyfriend-collaborator of Bjork. Barney's Cremaster series is a strange world, and a willful call to sexual convulsion, the palpability of the aesthetic, prosthetics on the loose, and utter spectacle. We -- the lucky "we" who aspire to an engaged and elegant cultured-ness, who purport to look for instances of beauty whether at Amoeba Music or Rivington Arms or in the everyday shuffle of our cities' sidewalks-- came of age during the Cremaster cycle, patiently awaited and anticipated Cremaster 3, refrained from giggles when the ancient Richard Serra harvested petroleum jelly along the sprial of the Guggenheim. We privileged artful excess; we delighted in Barney's pig eared, tartan-tailored satyrs (and self). There was a jovial sensibility in the air. And even after 9/11, the idea that Cremaster 3 could come out just meant we were moving on, that we had things to do, places, things, and people to see; there was a degree of relief that Cremaster could still be Cremaster and that we could indulge in it because there was actually something to indulge in.
But these days are different. We live in a world whose realities of war and national division are difficult to confront, but they always linger, enough so that they impress their urgency on us daily. And especially we, as cultured individuals, feel a certain sense of responsibility for these trying times, and a certain necessity to finding productive solutions for them. And into this torrential political climate and these sky-high gas prices comes Barney's film, a love story deep in the sea-hardy seas of Japan that puts Barney and Bjork in fine kimonos and shark-jaw shoes, that sees them precise and perfunctory in a traditional Japanese tea ceremony (I think this is where the purported Shinto wedding comes in), and, after they seem to start licking and gnawing at each other's faces, unites them in self-destructive, knife-happy, gory glory. And then they really eat each other. And then they turn into whales. This is the sped-up version that you could only get for two pennies. The storyboards, I imagine, must have aspired to a novel-worthy page count because the movie is almost three hours of aesthetic control, preciousness, waiting, wanting, near-satisfaction, and the kind of agony that we love to hate but still kind of love anyway. My patience notwithstanding, I will try to do the film more descriptive justice in the next couple of paragraphs.
The first scene sets the elegant pace of the film: a woman wraps two gifts -- rocks that ooze clear, viscous liquid -- with the kind of precision that could probably garner her human national treasure status in Japan. She folds, cuts and bisects with near-mechanical care, showing us that wrapping paper need not just wrap, but, rather, has its own angular, unaligned and off-center/minimalistly elegant purposes. The presents done, and sitting quietly but pondorously next to each other, a quick cut delivers us to a happy band of Japanese festival dancers and workers parades through the turbines of some dock, reveling and fanning themselves, and after much delay finally starting the process of Baney's signature petroleum and what Carina Chocano acutely called the "bisected Vaseline suppository." And thus begins the strange symbol that will lurk throughout the whole movie. We also get glimpses of Barney and Bjork -- who never become more than Barney and Bjork -- as they leave their own territories to converge on the Nisshin Maru, a fatefully commissioned whaling ship, with many workers and ship-ish things to do, and lots of attention to, yes, the bisected suppository.
As I've hinted at earlier, when they get to the ship, Bjork and Barney are initially groomed and clothed separately, and, heavily and ridiculously garbed, they plop down on a small little bench at the edge of the hull of the narrow ship. They wait, and wait, and a sliding door opens, revealing a ceremonial tea room, covered in tatami mats, and spidery tendrils of oceanic life--oh, and a column of barnacles. The master of the ship, an old man with a kind, intent face, serves them tea and every move is excruciatingly detailed. They are left to their own devices, and they start in on each other, the physical union only complete with the ship's petroleum stores start overflowing, and the couple can then go ahead and cut viciously into each other and eat each other to reveal - -TA DA! -- that they're both human-torsoed whales!
This is the main narrative thread of the film. It's fine, I suppose, but nothing revelatory, nothing meaningful. New York Times's Stephen Holden insisted that this was Barney's "Moby Dick." Bullshit--and this is also the painfully obvious analogy. Just because it involves whales and sea-things does not make it as extensive or as legitimately epic as Melville's masterpiece. Sure, I'll give it an A for obsession and micromanagement in the same way as the tale of the great whale, but to liken the two seems an ignorant jab at Melville.
Holden also insists that there are those who have been "initiated" into the Barney-fest simply by having seen his other films and maybe rambled around the Guggenheim a couple of years ago. But the fact of Matthew Barney is that you're never part of the club. And the finest difference between Melville and Barney is that Melville has a sense of emotional texture and empathy, both of which are just not Barney's expertise or aims. Barney never illustrates character; in fact, he denies it because of his highly aestheticized aesthetics. He places himself in the films because he is who he is, but developing three-dimensional voices, feelings, and life seems never to be an afterhtought. That is what makes the film so aggravating to watch because it becomes simply spectacle, relying on aesthetic tension to be its emotional crutch. But it's something that we have to admit makes Barney who he is; it's the subtle reason for buying the ticket. It's this suspended depth that makes Barney compelling as an artist, academically and theoretically speaking, but perhaps not one's favorite artist, not one for whom you can feel passionate emotion for, as it's all surface, it's all sheen.
Character having never been found in Drawing Restraint 9, there is other footage to delight us in the meanwhile: cute Japanese female pearl divers; vertebrae-like Vaseline sculptures; a startling clown that really makes no sense to the plot; cute kids who throw up goo and others who mesh that goo with shrimp shells to start making some kind of sculpture; the gigantic, bright aqua cleaning pipe sculpture during the first ceremonial march; and a big long rock formation that clearly looks like the world's biggest gray turd. But these make for signature instances of randomness and Barney's insistence on connectedness, even something of a narrative. He hides so many easter eggs that it's impossible to keep track that even though we wanted to at first, there comes a point when the Easter Bunny no longer exists and we no longer care. And the only part of the film that is self-consciously light is the part when denim-on-denim outfitted Barney's thick hair and eyebrows are shaved while he's sleeping. But that's where the problem lies: the only kind of hilarity--the only release that we get from the purported seriousness of the film--that can take place is when Barney is still in control, when he is aware of and lets the joke operate and perform. That's when one's breathing room is frustrated, that's when we want very badly to take our eyes off the screen and go home already.
But we don't. We sit still, for some reason, because somehow we feel compelled to see these incredibly long films that make no sense!
That sense of knowing you'll just be exasperated or frustrated or unhealed, but doing it anyway is what I think makes Barney's work like expired Tylenol Rapid Release Gels. [Indeed, Chicano's suppository must be taken further!] The expired Tylenol gel cap can still maintain its sturdy, molded form; it still gleams with its shiny colors, still glistens with its gelled surface. Inside are tiny fragments, these little balls of chemicals that are all similar in composition and encapsulated in the same space, all overseen by the same machines (the machines, in the case of Barney being his assistants and underlings). The expired Tylenol Rapid Release Gel is very attractive. And when you have a headache, you might not really be pay attention to the expiration date because you just want to get rid of the headache, or even if you are looking at the fact that the bottle says 09/2004, you don't really mind because how harmful can it be? So you just swallow the damn thing. It goes down pretty easily, being so pretty and all, but after fifteen minutes, then half an hour, then an hour, you realize it's not working. And you feel disappointed. But it was harmless. It was a little bit of your time. It was a little bit of money. And for a small instance, it gave you hope that you'd feel better. But you know better than that.
In fact, you did even before you went and saw the movie.
IFC Films
Written and Directed by Matthew Barney
Music by Bjork
Producers: Barbara Gladstone and Matthew Barney
Attention: Spoiler alert!
Last night, Linda and I saw Drawing Restraint 9, the first feature film release arrival of Matthew Barney, art world auteur, Cremaster craftsman, and boyfriend-collaborator of Bjork. Barney's Cremaster series is a strange world, and a willful call to sexual convulsion, the palpability of the aesthetic, prosthetics on the loose, and utter spectacle. We -- the lucky "we" who aspire to an engaged and elegant cultured-ness, who purport to look for instances of beauty whether at Amoeba Music or Rivington Arms or in the everyday shuffle of our cities' sidewalks-- came of age during the Cremaster cycle, patiently awaited and anticipated Cremaster 3, refrained from giggles when the ancient Richard Serra harvested petroleum jelly along the sprial of the Guggenheim. We privileged artful excess; we delighted in Barney's pig eared, tartan-tailored satyrs (and self). There was a jovial sensibility in the air. And even after 9/11, the idea that Cremaster 3 could come out just meant we were moving on, that we had things to do, places, things, and people to see; there was a degree of relief that Cremaster could still be Cremaster and that we could indulge in it because there was actually something to indulge in.
But these days are different. We live in a world whose realities of war and national division are difficult to confront, but they always linger, enough so that they impress their urgency on us daily. And especially we, as cultured individuals, feel a certain sense of responsibility for these trying times, and a certain necessity to finding productive solutions for them. And into this torrential political climate and these sky-high gas prices comes Barney's film, a love story deep in the sea-hardy seas of Japan that puts Barney and Bjork in fine kimonos and shark-jaw shoes, that sees them precise and perfunctory in a traditional Japanese tea ceremony (I think this is where the purported Shinto wedding comes in), and, after they seem to start licking and gnawing at each other's faces, unites them in self-destructive, knife-happy, gory glory. And then they really eat each other. And then they turn into whales. This is the sped-up version that you could only get for two pennies. The storyboards, I imagine, must have aspired to a novel-worthy page count because the movie is almost three hours of aesthetic control, preciousness, waiting, wanting, near-satisfaction, and the kind of agony that we love to hate but still kind of love anyway. My patience notwithstanding, I will try to do the film more descriptive justice in the next couple of paragraphs.
The first scene sets the elegant pace of the film: a woman wraps two gifts -- rocks that ooze clear, viscous liquid -- with the kind of precision that could probably garner her human national treasure status in Japan. She folds, cuts and bisects with near-mechanical care, showing us that wrapping paper need not just wrap, but, rather, has its own angular, unaligned and off-center/minimalistly elegant purposes. The presents done, and sitting quietly but pondorously next to each other, a quick cut delivers us to a happy band of Japanese festival dancers and workers parades through the turbines of some dock, reveling and fanning themselves, and after much delay finally starting the process of Baney's signature petroleum and what Carina Chocano acutely called the "bisected Vaseline suppository." And thus begins the strange symbol that will lurk throughout the whole movie. We also get glimpses of Barney and Bjork -- who never become more than Barney and Bjork -- as they leave their own territories to converge on the Nisshin Maru, a fatefully commissioned whaling ship, with many workers and ship-ish things to do, and lots of attention to, yes, the bisected suppository.
As I've hinted at earlier, when they get to the ship, Bjork and Barney are initially groomed and clothed separately, and, heavily and ridiculously garbed, they plop down on a small little bench at the edge of the hull of the narrow ship. They wait, and wait, and a sliding door opens, revealing a ceremonial tea room, covered in tatami mats, and spidery tendrils of oceanic life--oh, and a column of barnacles. The master of the ship, an old man with a kind, intent face, serves them tea and every move is excruciatingly detailed. They are left to their own devices, and they start in on each other, the physical union only complete with the ship's petroleum stores start overflowing, and the couple can then go ahead and cut viciously into each other and eat each other to reveal - -TA DA! -- that they're both human-torsoed whales!This is the main narrative thread of the film. It's fine, I suppose, but nothing revelatory, nothing meaningful. New York Times's Stephen Holden insisted that this was Barney's "Moby Dick." Bullshit--and this is also the painfully obvious analogy. Just because it involves whales and sea-things does not make it as extensive or as legitimately epic as Melville's masterpiece. Sure, I'll give it an A for obsession and micromanagement in the same way as the tale of the great whale, but to liken the two seems an ignorant jab at Melville.
Holden also insists that there are those who have been "initiated" into the Barney-fest simply by having seen his other films and maybe rambled around the Guggenheim a couple of years ago. But the fact of Matthew Barney is that you're never part of the club. And the finest difference between Melville and Barney is that Melville has a sense of emotional texture and empathy, both of which are just not Barney's expertise or aims. Barney never illustrates character; in fact, he denies it because of his highly aestheticized aesthetics. He places himself in the films because he is who he is, but developing three-dimensional voices, feelings, and life seems never to be an afterhtought. That is what makes the film so aggravating to watch because it becomes simply spectacle, relying on aesthetic tension to be its emotional crutch. But it's something that we have to admit makes Barney who he is; it's the subtle reason for buying the ticket. It's this suspended depth that makes Barney compelling as an artist, academically and theoretically speaking, but perhaps not one's favorite artist, not one for whom you can feel passionate emotion for, as it's all surface, it's all sheen.
Character having never been found in Drawing Restraint 9, there is other footage to delight us in the meanwhile: cute Japanese female pearl divers; vertebrae-like Vaseline sculptures; a startling clown that really makes no sense to the plot; cute kids who throw up goo and others who mesh that goo with shrimp shells to start making some kind of sculpture; the gigantic, bright aqua cleaning pipe sculpture during the first ceremonial march; and a big long rock formation that clearly looks like the world's biggest gray turd. But these make for signature instances of randomness and Barney's insistence on connectedness, even something of a narrative. He hides so many easter eggs that it's impossible to keep track that even though we wanted to at first, there comes a point when the Easter Bunny no longer exists and we no longer care. And the only part of the film that is self-consciously light is the part when denim-on-denim outfitted Barney's thick hair and eyebrows are shaved while he's sleeping. But that's where the problem lies: the only kind of hilarity--the only release that we get from the purported seriousness of the film--that can take place is when Barney is still in control, when he is aware of and lets the joke operate and perform. That's when one's breathing room is frustrated, that's when we want very badly to take our eyes off the screen and go home already.
But we don't. We sit still, for some reason, because somehow we feel compelled to see these incredibly long films that make no sense!
That sense of knowing you'll just be exasperated or frustrated or unhealed, but doing it anyway is what I think makes Barney's work like expired Tylenol Rapid Release Gels. [Indeed, Chicano's suppository must be taken further!] The expired Tylenol gel cap can still maintain its sturdy, molded form; it still gleams with its shiny colors, still glistens with its gelled surface. Inside are tiny fragments, these little balls of chemicals that are all similar in composition and encapsulated in the same space, all overseen by the same machines (the machines, in the case of Barney being his assistants and underlings). The expired Tylenol Rapid Release Gel is very attractive. And when you have a headache, you might not really be pay attention to the expiration date because you just want to get rid of the headache, or even if you are looking at the fact that the bottle says 09/2004, you don't really mind because how harmful can it be? So you just swallow the damn thing. It goes down pretty easily, being so pretty and all, but after fifteen minutes, then half an hour, then an hour, you realize it's not working. And you feel disappointed. But it was harmless. It was a little bit of your time. It was a little bit of money. And for a small instance, it gave you hope that you'd feel better. But you know better than that.In fact, you did even before you went and saw the movie.
posted by Melissa at 12:33 PM
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