April 18, 2006
The Life Aquatic with Matthew Barney / MP3 of the moment #3
Still from Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint 9.
There is little new to be said about Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint 9, which was released a few weeks ago and is now screening at the IFC Center in the West Village. There were, of course, reviews in all of the major media outlets—the New York Times and the Village Voice, among many others—as well as numerous posts on blogs. (Girish's comments were among the earliest and remain among the most well thought out.) As is to be expected, there is little impartial commentary; like all extremely ambitious artists, Matthew Barney seems only to draw fulsome praise or withering criticism, and the film, loaded with visual cues referencing the Cremaster series with which he made his name, will convert few critics and dissuade few fans. Overwrought pageantry and meticulously observed ritual, a fetishist's appreciation of elaborate costuming, and all manner of viscous semiliquid materials figure prominently.
I enjoyed the film. A few brief comments:
- I agree with those who criticize Barney's editing skills, as the film seems like an endless succession of eight- to ten-second takes; were it not for the Björk's evocative soundtrack, there would be even less narrative thrust than can now be discerned. The film's action hovers somewhere between nonnarrative and narrative states, and it suffers some for it.
- While there are plenty of striking moments, there is no single image in Drawing Restraint 9 as beautiful as individual scenes in his Cremaster films. (I'm thinking specifically of the use of the Chrysler building as a maypole in Cremaster 3 or the scene in which Barney jumps off a bridge into the Danube in Cremaster 5.)
- The ending seems tacked on, as if Barney had extra visual material—the kabuki clown, the woman vomiting pearls into the sea, etc.—that he wanted to include but couldn't otherwise fit.
- Some commentators have glossed the reference to Douglas MacArthur in the beginning of the film, but I'm surprised that none yet have reached back to Matthew C. Perry, the original "Occidental Guest." I know that the coincidence of their first names is just that, but it is a suggestive one nonetheless.
Anyway, posting about the movie grants me the opportunity to update my "MP3 of the Moment," listed at the bottom of the middle column. I have uploaded "Gratitude," composed by Björk and performed by Will Oldham, Zeena Parkins, and a choir of Japanese children. From bjork.com: "In the film's moving opening sequence, we hear Will Oldham sing in English the text of a letter from a Japanese citizen to General MacArthur thanking him for lifting the U.S. moratorium on whaling off the nation's coasts; this text was adapted by Matthew Barney and set to music by Björk for harp, here played by Zeena Parkins. Its delicate delivery acknowledges the folk-culture roots of whaling, while it also subtly flags the barbed history and politics surrounding its source text." The song is not as powerful as "Storm," which, along with Funkstörung's remix of "All is Full of Love," hovers near the top of my all-time-favorite Björk song list, but it has its own charms—namely that adorable choir.