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The Cremaster Cycle
**
Cinema
Review - December 13, 2003
Rated on a 4-star scale. USA. 40 minutes (Cremaster
1); 79 mins (Cremaster 2); 179 mins (Cremaster 3); 42 mins (Cremaster 4);
55 mins (Cremaster 5). Conceived and directed by Matthew Barney. Produced
by Matthew Barney, Barbara Gladstone. Starring Marti Domination, Norman Mailer,
Matthew Barney, Richard Serra, Terry Gillespie, Ursula Andress, Joanne Rha,
Susan Rha, a whole lot of sculptures.
The cremaster, according to what I've read, is
a muscle in the male reproductive system, which "controls testicular contractions
in response to external stimuli". Heat, mood, that sort of thing. And
"The Cremaster Cycle" is a series of films by the artist Matthew
Barney, made over the course of eight years. They played in video installations,
surrounded by props and sculptures; they were a big hit with the Guggenheim
crowd, and now they are touring cinemas.
There is "Cremaster 1", "Cremaster 2", "Cremaster
3", "Cremaster 4" and "Cremaster 5". They were made in 1996, 1999, 2002,
1995 and 1997. So their order of creation is 4, 1, 2, 5, 3. I think you can
see them in that order. Or you can see them completely out of order. Or you
can do what I did, and see them over the course of a few days as 1, 2, 3,
4, 5. Nobody seems quite sure. Some people have read which order they came
out in, and then find they've forgotten when they try to say it out loud.
It is of course conceivable to finish them in one day, but some of us are
keen to hold on to our last shreds of sanity.
"Cremaster 1" is forty minutes long, and beautiful.
It takes place in two Goodyear blimps, which hover over a football field.
Inside the crafts are groups of air hostesses, who sit on the side looking
calm and indifferent, surrounded by the humming of machinery. We're reminded
of "2001: A Space Odyssey". There are tables in each blimp; the interiors
are identical, except on one of the tables are green grapes, and on the other
the grapes are red. Underneath the tables is a girl who looks like Gwen Stefani,
played by the fetish icon Marti Domination. She sneaks grapes under the table,
arranges them on the floor, and in patterns that match the same arrangement,
parades of dancers do Busby Berkeley-type numbers on the football
field.
"Cremaster 2" is a little longer; it's just under
and hour and twenty, and it has extra room for more confusing craziness.
There are a husband and wife getting their fortunes read. There is a cowboy
and his woman, dancing real slow in a circular room. Norman Mailer plays
Harry Houdini, attempting to get out of a strait jacket and saying things
that sound solemn and important. (There isn't much dialogue, but this is
the only instalment with any.) In another location, a guy robs a gas station
and blows the teller's brains out. He is then put to death by Canadian mounties,
who first make him do rodeo rides in the snow. The killer, according to the
credits, is the famous Gary Gilmore, and is played by Barney himself. I think
this is something to do with Mailer's "The Executioner's Song", which in
some way connects Houdini and Gilmore. But I never did get around to reading
that book.
Parts 4 and 5 are both under an hour -- they're
fairly straightforward, the first showing yellow and blue race cars driving
in opposite directions in between cutaways to red goblins stomping in the
floor in a hut, the second being set in an opera house and absorbing lots
of classy dark colours and soaring music. "Cremaster 3" is the endurance
test; it last for three hours, starting out with cavemen, then cutting to
the Chrysler Building in what looks to be the 1930s. In the basement, cars
smash against each other. Upstairs, fat gangster-looking types stand and
act moody, and in another room another woman (who does not look like Gwen
Stefani) plays with objects that presumably represent internal organs. There's
a bar connecting both rooms. The barman tries to pull pints of Guinness,
but they slip all over the place. He is connected to the bar on a string,
which seems to be some sort of commentary about the control of the ruling
classes. Later, the gangsters perform an operation on one of the men's private
parts. I can't remember if they drink the Guinness.
Certain images reoccur throughout the five chapters.
In all of them, in at least one point, someone will find themselves playing
with a waxy, Vaseliney sort of goop that ends up getting smeared everywhere.
There are also odd sculptures, usually coloured white, that perhaps are the
cremaster or its related muscles -- they look like they'd belong inside the
body.
Does it look good? Sort of. I especially liked
the piercing white of the first part and the menacing darkness of the second,
but all of Barney's images are balanced and precise; he knows how to compose
frames and move the camera, and he creates an atmosphere of meaningful
expectation. While a lot of video art is amateurish or has limited scope,
this guy goes for an epic feel, and even though the movies all look different,
there are elements within their constructions that clearly come from one
man's obsessions.
What Barney does not know how to do is communicate.
We know there's a meaning in here, he knows there is, and he subjects us
to almost eight hours of material without letting it slip into focus. In
"Cremaster 4", the colours and the cars and the men in funny make-up might
not have obvious symbolism, but at least the film builds on its own terms;
moments move into other moments, and the end is not the same as the beginning.
"Cremaster 1" is more accurate a reflection of the way the series feels --
it doesn't build up, it just repeats itself. We see the air hostesses, we
see the grapes, we see Marti Domination, we see the dancers. Something is
going to happen… but then no, we cut back to the start, and a similar
succession of shots is played out all over again.
It's one of the infuriating tendencies of fine
art. There will be a work, and there will be a theory behind the work, but
the work will not necessarily have to say or dramatise anything, it just
has to be inspired by a thought or intention in some abstract way or another.
Sometimes the artist will explain the theory, and tell you all about how
this or that sculpture represents the contemporary breakdown in human
communications or whatever their topic might be, and maybe you get the logical
thread that led to what they made, and maybe you won't. It doesn't even matter,
man, it's just, like, all about, like, you know.
The amount of pretentious elusiveness in the art
world can be tolerated if the work manages to be arresting, and yeah, "Cremaster"
is that, just by virtue of its being such a massive project. But it doesn't
matter when we're sitting there watching "Cremaster 3" -- Barney has time
to make it more clear, more powerful, more entertaining, but instead he wallows
in the glory of his creation, slowly slowly revealing layers that are as
empty as each other, stringing out the deadness of the atmosphere just for
the sake of it and accompanying it with cold, droning, monotonous musical
notes. Last week I saw "Le Cercle Rouge", a 1970 work by Jean-Pierre Melville,
which set up the bare bones of a crime plot and meditated on it with a lot
of silent patience. The difference between a movie like that and an artwork
like this is that in the one with the story, the camera is observing characters,
feeling their tension, waiting to see who will catch who or what decisions
will be made. We're waiting for the pin to drop, not waiting to find out
if there's a pin.
Barney, in dangling all these strange images,
symbols and biological objects at us, but then drawing back and swirling
around in confusion for the sake of 'creativity', is wasting our time. He's
like some jackass who keeps telling us he has a secret, and then puts his
head in his hands and says, no, he just couldn't bear to tell us. I want
to admire his raw talent and audacity, but does he deserve that, or is he
just a chancer who got lucky with a lot of funding? Yes, "Cremaster" is pretty.
Yes, it's expansive. But that doesn't mean a lot when not only are we confused
as to what it means, but its rhythm isn't strong enough to hold our attention.
I don't know if I respect what Barney has produced, so much as I'm just happy
for his success and amazed at how he managed to blag so much
attention.
COPYRIGHT©
2003 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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