then you will probably not be interested in
drawing restraint 9.
i however loved
the cremaster cycle. i liked this new movie but i found the underlying idea to be less compelling than that of the cremaster cycle. the basic concept of this series is energy for creation being restrained from the act of creating.
this idea is supposed to also be cyclical, with an eventual creation and return to a state of restrained energy.
most of drawing restraint 9 takes place on a japanese whaling vessel at sea. matthew barney and bjork are guests on this ship and are transformed into quasi-oceanic creatures when they are dressed by elderly japanese women. you can find a still of them
here and
here.
they attend a strange tea ceremony with teaware that appear to be the skeletons of sea creatures hosted by the captain of the ship who gives them the history of the ship. the manner in which he gives the ship's history, makes you think that the ship is a whale or perhaps the nation of japan. the crew of the ship harpoon a long cylindrical floating rock that could be taken to represent a whale or the nation of japan.
matthew barney and bjork go at each other with knives cutting off each others feet and cutting up each others legs as the tea room fills up with water. i don't want to spoil the ending for you, but i'll leave you with the knowledge that in shinto mythology whales are said to be the ancestors of the japanese.
that being said this isn't a good explanation of what goes down in the movie, and this movie is just as cryptic as barney's cremaster movies. it's like a moving painting with almost no dialogue and cryptic action.
i enjoyed this movie, although, as i said earlier i find the underlying concept to be less compelling than that of cremaster. i would definitely suggest seeing this movie; but if you don't like cremaster or barney you will loathe this movie because it is two and a half hours of barney.
a few side notes. i thought that the circle with the bar through it that he used in the cremaster cycle was the symbol for cremaster. that symbol is all over this movie, so i guess he is using it as a symbol for himself or for general ideas in his art work.
also, barney became a notable artist when he exhibited a video of himself naked and climbing the walls of the gladstone gallery naked and covered in vaseline in 1991. i wonder if this inspired trent reznor to pen the line "covered in hope and vaseline" for the song "gave up" on his 1992 "broken" e.p.
i think it may be harder for barney to keep this movie from being bootlegged and getting wider notoriety because it features bjork and some songs by her. in fact
the soundtrack is listed as being a bjork album.
oh yeah, and yes he uses tons of vaseline in drawing restraint 9.
