Saturday, April 1, 2006
Drawing Restraint 9 - a Film Steeped in Ritual, With Whales and a Wedding
Some of the reviews have been aggressively dismissive. While the New York Times liked the film, they noted "an overt spiritual dimension that is a new element in Mr. Barney's work. If that spirituality is an outgrowth of his relationship with Bjork, it is a welcome addition in an oeuvre whose obsession with athleticism, competition and fertility rites has sometimes taken on fascistic overtones." Ah, poor Hercules, your labours now seem to us like fascism! But who knew fertility itself was fascist? Well, survival of the fittest and all that, I suppose Mother Nature has a bit of a Hitler thing going on, or at least a Darwin one.
Link
A good part of the film follows Mr. Barney and Bjork, who are welcomed aboard the ship as Occidental guests and undergo elaborate preparations for a traditional Shinto wedding ceremony. Their union, however ecstatic, quickly leads to a solemn, stylized Liebestod that embodies the film's depiction of life as a series of passages in a relentless cycle of creation and destruction.
Link
Matthew Barney's latest labor of love, Drawing Restraint 9, which is now playing at the IFC Center in New York.
Some of the reviews have been aggressively dismissive. While the New York Times liked the film, they noted "an overt spiritual dimension that is a new element in Mr. Barney's work. If that spirituality is an outgrowth of his relationship with Bjork, it is a welcome addition in an oeuvre whose obsession with athleticism, competition and fertility rites has sometimes taken on fascistic overtones." Ah, poor Hercules, your labours now seem to us like fascism! But who knew fertility itself was fascist? Well, survival of the fittest and all that, I suppose Mother Nature has a bit of a Hitler thing going on, or at least a Darwin one.
Link
A good part of the film follows Mr. Barney and Bjork, who are welcomed aboard the ship as Occidental guests and undergo elaborate preparations for a traditional Shinto wedding ceremony. Their union, however ecstatic, quickly leads to a solemn, stylized Liebestod that embodies the film's depiction of life as a series of passages in a relentless cycle of creation and destruction.Link
Matthew Barney's latest labor of love, Drawing Restraint 9, which is now playing at the IFC Center in New York.
