Sunday, June 04, 2006

Occidental



I went to see Drawing Restraint 9.

It is a film by Matthew Barney. He is an artist and is married to Björk. It is only going to be released in theatres I heard so I felt obligated as a fan of art to go see it.

Matthew Barney has also done a series of films called The Cremaster Cycle. I saw Cremaster 4 many years ago, and was to young to really understand it. He seems to be the artists artist. He makes weird films that really no one but himself fully understand. I am becoming more of a fan of his. I wish that I could think the same way he does.

Anyway...

Drawing Restraint 9 was playing really late and I was seeing it on the second to last day, so I figured I would be one of about 10 people there. When I walked into the theatre I was in fact the only one there. But by the time it started I would guess that there were about 30 people.

The film, as I understood it, is about transformation. There is an agonizingly long Japanese tea ceremony in the middle of it, a large mold filled with petroleum jelly, and at the end Björk and Matthew turn into whales. If you go to his website you can read all about it, and I am not going to re-hash what he has to say. You really should go to the website, it's quite interesting.

If you like artsy, mildly pretentiousus films, I would absolutely give it a try. As I said earlier I don't think It's coming out on DVD or anything, so you might have to wait until it comes to an art gallery near you, or try and catch it in theatres.

4 comments:

silverfoxology said...

I try hard, but I don't know if I'm that arty. I'm elitist enough to turn up my nose at most of whatever Hollywood is doing, but enough of a yokel to go "huh?" at the artiest of art. I should give this a shot though. Maybe if I keep at it, it will start to make sense. Wait, do I really want that? I'm going to stop thinking about this now.

Anonymous said...

I hated the last cremaster movie so much I wanted to beat Matthew Barney to death. Although in all fairness, I didn't see it from the beginning, so maybe I just didn't follow the story, although it pretty much consisted of people in satyr makeup prancing around.

D-£ said...

You speak of Cremaster 4, the one that has been at the Walker since time immemorial, and the one I saw a million years ago.

D-£ said...

Yeah, I meant just the Drawing Restraint 9 not being released. And hey, if I could charge $10,000 for a DVD and have people buy it that would be sweet.