sharplittleteeth (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sharplittleteeth) wrote2004-02-15 10:44 pm
sharplittleteeth) wrote2004-02-15 10:44 pm
Cremaster 3
Hmm...
All the reveiws said Cremaster 3 was the best of the cycle. They were wrong.
I came out of Cremaster 2 with my mind on fire, burning with desire to understand, to see the whole Cycle. Cremaster 3 killed that dead.
I don't actually have a lot to say about this one. There's a synopsis on the Cremaster website that offers as much insight as I can. All I can add is that while I could find a clear thematic development between C1 and C2, C3 seemed unconnected.
And that Matthew Barney is hit and miss as a filmmaker.
He composes some incredible images. But he has no grasp of pacing. The first half of C3 was (with some remarkable exceptions) simply boring.
I know this isn't Hollywood. But if you choose to work in a time-based medium, you have accept that timing is part of your aesthetic effect. Barney doesn't get that his audience is visually literate. We don't need to be beaten repeatedly over the head with an image for it to register. We grew up on MTV, man.
Maybe that's the problem. Maybe the Role of Tedious Repetion in Video Art is simply to cover the artist's insecuirities. "This is High Art," he screams, looping an image for the seventh time, "Not some lowbrow video-clip."
(Something similar happened during the early day of photography. Photographers would recreate famous paintings for the camera, in a bid to be regarded as a serious art form.)
Whatever the reasoning, it doesn't work. It robs the film of emotional impact. And makes me question the competence of the maker. There are ways of expressing boredom, without being boring yourself.
And while we're talking incompetance: can the Guggenhiem Museum please set up a fund to pay a bouncer to follow Mathew Barney around, and punch the mutherfucker if he ever tires to film slapstick comedy again? That bar scene is just cringeworthy.
The second half is better. There's some actual pace to the pacing, some more great images, and a duel between hardcore bands Agnostic Front and Murhpy's Law. But it still lacks the visceral punch of Cremaster 2.
Linky Goodness:
Racing Dead Horses. Dental Torture. The Usual. -- New York Times review of Cremaster 3, lots of insight.
Self-Portraiture Meets Mythology: Matthew Barney Talks About His "Cremaster Cycle" -- like it says, an interview with Mathew Barney.
All the reveiws said Cremaster 3 was the best of the cycle. They were wrong.
I came out of Cremaster 2 with my mind on fire, burning with desire to understand, to see the whole Cycle. Cremaster 3 killed that dead.
I don't actually have a lot to say about this one. There's a synopsis on the Cremaster website that offers as much insight as I can. All I can add is that while I could find a clear thematic development between C1 and C2, C3 seemed unconnected.
And that Matthew Barney is hit and miss as a filmmaker.
He composes some incredible images. But he has no grasp of pacing. The first half of C3 was (with some remarkable exceptions) simply boring.
I know this isn't Hollywood. But if you choose to work in a time-based medium, you have accept that timing is part of your aesthetic effect. Barney doesn't get that his audience is visually literate. We don't need to be beaten repeatedly over the head with an image for it to register. We grew up on MTV, man.
Maybe that's the problem. Maybe the Role of Tedious Repetion in Video Art is simply to cover the artist's insecuirities. "This is High Art," he screams, looping an image for the seventh time, "Not some lowbrow video-clip."
(Something similar happened during the early day of photography. Photographers would recreate famous paintings for the camera, in a bid to be regarded as a serious art form.)
Whatever the reasoning, it doesn't work. It robs the film of emotional impact. And makes me question the competence of the maker. There are ways of expressing boredom, without being boring yourself.
And while we're talking incompetance: can the Guggenhiem Museum please set up a fund to pay a bouncer to follow Mathew Barney around, and punch the mutherfucker if he ever tires to film slapstick comedy again? That bar scene is just cringeworthy.
The second half is better. There's some actual pace to the pacing, some more great images, and a duel between hardcore bands Agnostic Front and Murhpy's Law. But it still lacks the visceral punch of Cremaster 2.
Linky Goodness:
Racing Dead Horses. Dental Torture. The Usual. -- New York Times review of Cremaster 3, lots of insight.
Self-Portraiture Meets Mythology: Matthew Barney Talks About His "Cremaster Cycle" -- like it says, an interview with Mathew Barney.
Re:
(Anonymous) 2004-02-16 05:13 pm (UTC)(link)I've been tossing this around and wondering about the artists vision being limited by his ability and perhaps budget. Some of the visual effects in 3 were atrocious and unfortunately served to "throw" me out of the film. Obviously Barney was hampered by a limited CGI budget and perhaps his skill or the skills of his assistants.
I saw parts of 1 online in really bad compression quality and the grapes falling out of the shoe looked like grapes and not like little CGI balls. I was a little disappointed to see them so crudely rendered.
I understand there's an aspect of abstraction, but I think when making film you should try to make it look as much like film as possible. Otherwise, isn't it like carving a statue out of styrofoam and then explaining that you couldn't afford marble? (That is, unless, you're making some sort of marble vs styrofoam statement.)
So, which parts worked, really worked for you? What were the moments where your mind just couldn't help but cry, "yes!"
With the prosthetics, I wondering if any of that owes a debt to Barney's football scholarship > injury > artist life path.
How much of our reaction is informed by the fact that this is Art? Perhaps when asked: "So what did you think?" It is is enough to answer: "Crap film, brilliant art"
Re:
So, which parts worked, really worked for you? What were the moments where your mind just couldn't help but cry, "yes!"
Cremaster 1:
- Goodyear twisting and turning under the womb-like table.
- Goodyear tearing ahole inthe table cloth.
- The bored air hostesses (the first few times)
(Never really cried "yes!". Occasionally thought "that's kind of cool." But camp and kitsch don't really appeal to me. And the repetition drained the joy out of the stuff I did like.)
Cremaster 2
- The seance.
- The bee sex.
- The bee/drumming sequence.
- The murder of the gas station attendant.
(Hmm... I'm having trouble remembering actual sequences from the film. What I do remember is the overall mood, oppressive and haunted. And my mind racing as I tried to work out how it all fitted together.
And then I saw the Houdini Metamorphosis poster. Something went click. Thought about it. Realised that my idea didn't quite fit. There was a second, profounder click. And I understood not only C2, but C1 as well, and how they were related.)
Cremaster 3
- The corpse crawling out of its grave. Not just how it looked, but how it moved.
- The corpse being placed in the vintage car, with the eagle on the back seat. (The eagle made me think of Tibetan air burials. Which is what the demolition derby was.)
- The dead-horse race (but that was "cool" rather than "yes!")
- The dental torture scene. Not just the creepiness, but for the Cronenberg-esque anatomy.
- The utterly gorgeous art-deco style inside the Chrysler building.
The Order has its "cool" moments: Aimee Mullins on her glass artificial legs, the duelling punk bands, Barney leaping and climbing with that fucked-up bloodstained mouth.
(The Celtic myth prologue left me dubious. Then the corpse blew me away. My hopes were high. But the first half dashed that. Too tedious, too little substance. The second half was better. But I kept searching for that moment of click. And it never came. I think that's partly why I was so dissapointed with C3.)
Re:
perhaps when he has more money he can go bck and re edit it in better CG.
but perhaps he doen't want to. for whatever reasons.
it is done now and i guess one cannot keep going back to a piece and re working every flaw, or you never get anything else done ;]
so perhaps it is enough to say great art, bad film.