NOTE: Quotation marks are used throughout this review, because words like "main character" and "adventure" seem too conventional for such an experimental "movie".
Matthew Barney comes off as pretty immature and pretentious after watching "Cremaster 4", but it's also clear that he has the ability to make great art. I have yet to see any of his other films, and I've made it my mission to watch every single installment of "The Cremaster Cycle" within the next month or so. It may be a tough task, but I will try my hardest. However, if ALL of his "Cremaster" films are just like this one, it's very likely that I will be forced to give up, because this was utterly uncomfortable to sit through.
There were a few things about it I liked. The "main character" was this interesting and creepy goat like tap dancing creature. There's something about his look that really intrigued and fascinated me, and most of his "adventure" (I use this term lightly) was at least mildly appealing to me. I mostly enjoyed the brief part in which eh was underwater, because it contributed to the film's interesting, fantasy like approach.
I didn't like how damn uncomfortable the film made me! At times it was really, really disgusting. But, it wasn't CONVENTIONALLY disgusting. In fact, I can't explain very well why some of the images came across as so icky to me, they just did. The film has an overall uncomfortable atmosphere, but it was also very pretentious. Personally, I dislike using the word pretentious a lot, and I've defended many artist's who have been called pretentious in the past, but there's something about this film that felt extremely pretentious to me. Sexual symbolism is something that is constantly annoying to me when it comes to art cinema. Sometimes, it is done to interesting effect, but most of the time it's show offy and just plain bothersome.
While "Cremaster 4" has interesting imagery throughout, I felt like it was needlessly off putting (and, trust me, I like off putting things! My favorite movie of all time is "Eraserhead"!) and had really pretentious sexual symbolism.
