Mere om Filmen:
fra
www.aintitcool.com
Capone Embraces Vaseline, Cannibalism, Bjork, And DRAWING RESTRAINT 9!!
Hey, everyone. Capone in Chicago here, wielding the big "C" word in my meaty arm. That's right, I'm going to swack you across the face with a little bit of Culture, the kind that involves vats of Vaseline, cannibalism, and a tasty morsel of Bjork.
Visual artist Matthew Barney is my favorite kind of freak, and not just because he¹s been life-partners with Bjork for many years. And the fact that he had the guts to release his and Bjork¹s wedding video to the public at large ups my respect for him even more. What? You mean his new film, Drawing Restraint 9, isn't a wedding video? It sure feels like one, especially considering the bride and groom are two of the most daring and creative people in their fields. Barney's skill at melding the ordinary with the absurd and the industrial with the organic has never been more on display than it is in his latest work.
I was one of the few human beings on the planet to sit through all five parts of Barney¹s Cremaster Cycle a couple years back, and it wasn't as painful an experience as you might think. Barney is a master of creating a certain level of tension around his filmed work, and there were certain Cremaster segments that resulted in genuine anxiety. Thanks to an otherworldly score by Bjork, Drawing Restraint pulsates with life. Sometimes the music sounds more like pure rhythms than actual notes, and it only adds to the proceedings.
Much of the film takes place aboard a Japanese whaling ship, where laborers pour vats of liquid petroleum jelly into molds, as if creating an icon to an unknown god. Barney is obsessed with The Process of creation, so we are frequently forced to watch the very deliberate and slow labor that the workmen carry out aboard the ship. Barney casts himself and Bjork as two strangers who come to the ship as guests and end up taking part in an elaborate Japanese wedding ceremony, which begins with an endless tea ceremony and ends with the pair carving each other¹s flesh from their bodies and nibbling on them. It sure looks like a stand-in for sex, but I'm not qutie sure. Hmmmm.... It would be easy to judge Drawing Restraint 9 as simply an excuse for Barney and Bjork to dress up in silly costumes and find ways to mesh the beautiful with the grotesque, but there¹s more going on here than that.
Not all is good with Barney¹s work, however. It sometimes feels interminably long, and at times you are forced to wonder whether his style of juxtaposing seemingly unrelated events and images is a way to create new meaning or if the artist is simply slamming these elements into each other because he can. As the film wraps up, it would appear that Barney and Bjork have carved themselves up into whales, the Vaseline sculptures crumbles like icebergs, and the ship ends up floating toward Antarctica. I can't define art, but I know it when I see it and I know when I like it. Barney is beyond an acquired taste, but he's unpredictable and willing to take risks that few other filmmaker ever do. Seeing his films always makes me wonder how he would handle a conventional horror film, but, of course, he never would make one because it would be considered far too ordinary. To quote an old Bjork tune, Drawing Restraint 9 made me violently happy.