Cremaster 3

I suppose you have to have already made a decision about who you a re and how cinema fits in your life to lucidly decide the first things about this. What is it and how will it speak to you?

I've now seen the "long" version and a 30 minute cut that was apparently done for exhibiting at The Guggenheim for patrons with less patience. Actually, with a different score that short version would be something useful. It isn't that the score is offensive. It is, but that's not what I'm trying to avoid. (Bjork's handling of "Restraint" was apt while annoying.) What he needs is something that plays with his symbol-universe sonically.

The short version cuts out the whole Chrysler erection sequence and shortens the Guggenheim. There's less Crisco tossing.

You may like this. It reeks of importance. It has layers of symbology, at least so far as notations and is very much like those paintings from that era when you could say: those grapes "stand for" so and so and that reclining lamb next to them "means" such and such. So okay: scots freemasonry as dedeconstruction, punk fried eggs, Dante's circles of museum hell, manufactured women except one beast goddess...

It seems for some of these he comes up with the symbol systems first, then surveys what material he has and then forms a performance out of that based on objects and himself. That's weak tea for me. "Cremaster 1" was an important and rich experience for me. That's because I believe he started with the images and built everything around that. Its really quite brilliant and I recommend it to you.

But not this. Its his own yard sale. Don't go.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

Though Matthew Barney doesn't identify himself as a filmmaker per se -- he's a sculptor by training and practice -- his Cremaster Cycle has me convinced that he has a more expansive vision for the possibility of cinema than any new director since Godard grabbed the audience by the hair and pulled us behind the camera with him.

I think part of Barney's resistance to the filmmaker label is that, like the rest of the world, he's been conditioned to believe that movies are only intended to serve a limited set of purposes, namely to act as filmed imitations of ankle-deep novels or plays; that a literal narrative, propelled throughout by actors talking, is the essential element of any movie. This model has been so deeply embedded in all of our psyches that even when a guy like Barney says "f*&^k all that" and defies every conceivable convention, he still feels as though he's doing something which is only nominally a film, even if it is in fact the opposite: a fully realized motion picture experience.

For those who don't know, The Cremaster Cycle is Barney's dreamlike meditation on ... well, I guess it'd be up to each viewer to decide exactly what the topics are, since the movies deliberately make themselves available for subjective interpretaton. Clearly Barney has creation and death on his mind, as well as ritual, architecture and space, symbolism, gender roles, and a Cronenbergian fascination with anatomy.

The movies are gorgeously photographed in settings that could only have been designed by someone with the eye of a true visual artist. In the first half of "3," Barney reimagines the polished interiors of the Chrysler Building as a temple in which the building itself is paradoxically conceived. The second half, slightly more personal, has Barney's alter ego in garish Celtic dress scaling the interior of a sparse Guggenheim Museum, intersecting at its various levels what are presumably various stages of his own artistic preoccupations -- encounters with dancing girls, punk rock, and fellow modern artist Richard Serra, among others.

In the end, what kind of movie is it? It certainly isn't the kind of movie that'll have Joel Silver sweating bullets over the box-office competition. Nor is it likely that more than three or four Academy members will see it, though nominations for cinematography and art direction would be well-deserved. It sure isn't warm and fuzzy: for my money, it might be a little too designed, too calculated. I always prefer chaotic naturalism over studious control. Friedkin over Hitchcock for me. It *is* the kind of movie that the most innovative mainstream filmmakers will talk about ten and twenty years from now when asked what inspired them. Barney's willingness to work entirely with associative imagery, to spell out absolutely nothing, and to let meaning take its first shape in the viewer's imagination, is the kind of catalyst that gives impressionable young minds the notion they can do something they didn't before think possible.

Curiosity seekers… seek no more. Pretentious and `arty' could describe it… but I have to say I thought some very good work went into the production design and music. Less such into the "story". It's the top of the Matthew Barney pyramid of art films, culminating in a three hour orgy of celtic mythology, masonic legend, truly retch inducing reverse dental surgery, hardcore punk bands, beautiful models with masonic symbol pasties, double amputee model Aimee Mullins as a catwoman and with clear acrylic prosthetic legs, artist Richard Serra tossing molten vaseline against the walls of the Guggenheim, a sojourn up the elevator shafts of the Chrysler Building, a demolition derby in same's lobby… shall I go on? All the above said, the movie is still truly what it advertised itself to be. The same couldn't be said of many truly awful commercial films, i.e., "Gods and Generals" or "Gigli." You get the broken promises of entertainment and/ or involving historical drama. With C3, you get a chariot race with zombie horses, covered in blankets with the `Cremaster 3' crest emblazoned on them. And don't forget to stop in the museum's gift shop as you leave the theater. Thank you.

Glen Helfand of The Guardian was particularly astute in likening Matthew Barney's "Cremaster" films to the 'Star Wars' films. While most 'Star Wars' fanatics would walk out on the "Cremaster" films, these works, like Lucas' series, create a completely new and strange world, with each subsequent film exploring and elaborating that world.

It's easy and lazy to dismiss Barney's work as pretentious. Of course it's pretentious. It's also important. What Barney is doing is taking arcane symbols, myths and images (related to Mormonism, Freemasonry, the reproductive system, historical figures, geographic locations, etc) and making them more arcane by using them as not only the motifs in his films, but the foundations. This is pure cinematic mutation, as Barney assembles these symbols and elements and does with them what David Cronenberg does with flesh and metal. Humans and objects in The Cremaster Cycle do not behave in a recognizable way. They interact with one another in a manner that goes beyond ritualism into the realm of necessity. They're partaking in processes, not performing rituals. As The Loughton Candidate in "Cremaster 4" tap-dances his way into a womb-like tunnel inside the earth under the Isle of Man, or as a character known as 'Goodyear' incubates in a dirigible while eating grapes and excreting them through her shoe in "Cremaster 1," one realizes that these human-like figures are more like insects in their behavior. The Cremaster Cycle establishes a world in which human beings and objects behave without will, like the cells in our body or the neurons in our brain.

"Cremaster 3," three hours long, is the last film in the five-part Cremaster Cycle, and serves as a culmination -- Barney explained that he wished for the Cycle to end in the middle, as though overlooking the other two films in the series as a skyscraper might. Incidentally, one of the two primary locations used in "Cremaster 3" is The Chrysler Building, which is given a sinister, demonic presence here (as in "The Caveman's Valentine" -- what is it about the Chrysler Building?) as it becomes a vessel for all sorts of grisly goings-on. A protracted demolition derby sequence set in the Chrysler building lobby depicts a gang of five late '60s model Chryslers pummeling a vintage Chrysler, intercut by scenes of the renovation of the building's exterior -- drawing a parallel between violence and progress. The curious achievement of this sequence is that it's brutally violent and eventually hard to stomach, yet its violence is amongst vehicles, not living beings.

"Cremaster 3" is beautifully scored by Jonathan Bepler, with some arresting interactions between the music and the images. An intermission occurs at the halfway point, before which the narrative builds to a near-climax of overwhelming power (another such climax closes the film), another surprising accomplishment given Cremaster's completely alien course of events. And Barney's idea of parody is to dehumorize slapstick comedy by making it eerie, in a bar scene (redolent of Kubrick's 'The Shining') featuring the underused and distinctive-looking Terry Gillespie.

Matthew Barney's "Cremaster" series of 5 feature-length videos are an exploration of this artist's various interests. He's basically interested in everything, and manages to squeeze everything into this series. "Cremaster 3" is the centerpiece, wherein architecture, Freemason ritual, and folklore (Irish, Irish-American, American) take center stage. Barney offers little insight into his interests, simply presents them, overlaps them, as if he just made a list of stuff he likes and then visualized them. Luckily, his visual sense is utterly dazzling and eloquent. As a director, he is undoubtedly indebted to Kubrick and Hal Ashby. The images are elegant but pungent, finely polished but visceral and even gory in parts. The tone of the video, however, is deceitful (for lack of a less harsh word), suggesting a story or plot that doesn't really exist, or is so buried in the visual splendor as to be insignificant. It could be seen as a puzzle, but, in Barney's own words (according to the DVD commentary of "The Order" segment of "3"), it is merely a series of illustrations of ideas that have already been well drawn out (ie. Freemason ritual). Still it's worth watching, and listening to as well. Jonathan Bepler's score is truly gorgeous, reminiscent of Danny Elfman but even more haunting.