I tried — mostly on a dare — to watch Matthew Barney’s
entire six-hour-and-thirty-seven-minute Cremaster Cycle (also previewed by
Alex Miokovic and Heidi Nickisher on page 18) over the course of one evening
after being told it was a virtually impossible task. For starters, there’s the
whole time commitment issue, and there’s some question over which order the films
are supposed to be viewed (the five films were made out of sequence). More
troubling, I was warned, was the film’s content, which might be too much to
take in over several viewings, let alone one.
ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย I’m not sure
if this ever happened, because I bailed about halfway through the epic Cycle, which will screen, in much
friendlier chunks, over three consecutive evenings at the Dryden Theatre
beginning this Friday (December 12). Cremaster isn’t for everyone. I’m not sure exactly who it is for, but more power to them.
What I’ve written below is what I experienced while watching Barney’s films.
ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย Cremaster 1, which runs 40 minutes,
looks like a 1930s version of 2001: A
Space Odyssey, with two Goodyear blimps providing similarly sterile, white
interiors and a chorus line of dancers below kicking it Busby Berkeley-style on
a blue-turfed football field. Inside the blimps are bored flight attendants and
a table containing a pile of grapes and an odd-looking sculpture. Under the
table is an extremely pale blonde woman who digs a hole through to the grapes.
The dancers below the blimps begin to form patterns similar to those that the
fallen grapes form. Is it the same woman in both blimps? Could be. The grapes
are different colors in each one, though. And I have a feeling this is only the
beginning of the confusion.
ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย On to the
79-minute Cremaster 2, which contains
the Cycle’s first dialogue around Minute No. 7 (soon followed by its first
nudity — a full penetration shot involving a penis with a beehive for its
head — and its first song). Other seemingly unrelated snippets involve three
people sitting at a table, a death metal band in a recording studio, Vaseline
sculpting, and a convict with a very strange Mustang in a ’50s-style service
station. Toward the end, there’s a bull ride through a giant field of salt,
something that resembles the Revolutionary War, and a staggeringly boring scene
in a big, empty cathedral.
ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย Cremaster 3, Barney’s most recent film
and the longest by far at just over three hours, is the nicest-looking of the
three I managed to stomach. It’s all Art Deco-y, reminding me of more enjoyable
cinematic experiences involving the Coen brothers. That’s after, of course, the
strange opening that looks like it was taken out of lost footage from The Lord of the Rings. David Cronenberg
would be pleased by the big demolition derby inside the lobby of the Chrysler
Building, but my cats weren’t at all impressed by Cremaster 3‘s piercing music. They hid under the bed, even after I
turned it down, and reemerged around the time the woman with a triangle-shaped
cookie cutter attached to the sole of her shoe was trying to make perfect
wedges of raw potatoes.
ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย It was at
that point that I hopped online and tried to figure out exactly what I was
watching. The first thing I found was a review of Cremaster 1 that claimed that the series “metaphorically chronicles
the biological process from the sexually undifferentiated state that exists at
conception to the full realization of the sexual identity, which occurs with
the maturation of the gonads.” I’m too dumb to even understand what that means
when it’s spelled out for me, let alone thrown at me in cryptic snippets.
ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย I pressed
the stop button when I read that the three people sitting at the table in Cremaster 2 were supposed to be Barney’s
parents and Houdini’s girlfriend (apparently, Barney thinks the magician was
his grandfather) and the guy with the Mustang is really executed murderer Gary
Gilmore (played by Barney). I don’t need stuff spoon-fed to me, but a couple of
hints might be nice.
ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย Now you’ll
have to excuse me, as I’m late for a screening of Stuck On You.
If somebody gave me a pop quiz about Sylvia Plath, I’d probably fail it worse than Barry Bonds
taking a steroids test. Aside from knowing enough to cut a wide path around
those weird girls who read The Bell Jar in high school, I couldn’t tell you one thing about Plath. Don’t know where she
lived. Don’t know when she lived. Don’t know if she looked anything like
Gwyneth Paltrow.
ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย So, in a
way, I was the ideal viewer for Sylvia (opens Friday, December 12,
at the Little Theatre). A fresh slate. No preconceived notions about anything,
and completely without the lofty expectations a big Plath fan might have as
they eagerly await the release of their idol’s big screen story.
ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย Sadly, all
of that goodwill ended fairly soon into my Sylvia voyage. The film follows Plath’s life from her college years at Cambridge
through the day she put her head in the oven and checked out for good. While
one can’t fault the story — it’s yet another typical biopic about a tragic
dead person, complete with self-important, leaden pace — for being too
agonizingly gloomy, one can threaten
to brain the filmmakers for making it all so excruciatingly dull (I shouted,
“Hurry up and ice yourself already!” more than a few times). Paltrow plays
Plath, and does a decent job acting sufficiently crazy, but in a slightly more
likable way than, say, a movie about Elizabeth Wurtzel.
Interested in raw, unsanitized movie ramblings from Jon?
Visit his site, Planet Sick-Boy (www.sick-boy.com),
or listen to him on WBER’s Friday Morning Show.
This article appears in Dec 10-16, 2003.
