Cremaster 5

The Cremaster Cycle 9/10 The Cremaster Cycle is a series of five films shot over eight years. Although they can be seen individually, the best experience is seeing them all together (like Wagner's Ring Cycle) - and also researching as much as you can beforehand. To give you an idea of the magnitude, it has been suggested that their fulfilment confirms creator Matthew Barney as the most important American artist of his generation (New York Times Magazine).

The Cremaster films are works of art in the sense that the critical faculties you use whilst watching them are ones you might more normally use in, say, the Tate Modern, than in an art house cinema. They are entirely made up of symbols, have only the slimmest of linear plots, and experiencing them leaves you with a sense of awe, of more questions and inspirations than closed-book answers. The imagery is at once grotesque, beautiful, challenging, puzzling and stupendous. Any review can only hope to touch on the significance of such an event, but a few clues might be of interest, so for what it's worth ...

Starting with the title. The 'Cremaster' is a muscle that acts to retract the testes. This keeps the testes warm and protected from injury. (If you keep this in mind as you view the piece it will be easier to find other clues and make sense of the myriad allusions to anatomical development, sexual differentiation, and the period of embryonic sexual development - including the period when the outcome is still unknown. The films, which can be viewed in any order (though chronologically is probably better than numerically) range from Cremaster 1 (most 'ascended' or undifferentiated state) to Cremaster 5 (most 'descended'). The official Cremaster website contains helpful synopses.)

Cremaster 5 has a Tudor feel to it. It comprises mostly a tragic opera set in Budapest. I found it the most obscure of the whole cycle and could have done with subtitles at least to capture the meaning of the opera. Complex symbols involving Houdini further complicate the work.

The Guggenheim Museum (which houses a parallel exhibition) describes the Cremaster Cycle as "a self-enclosed aesthetic system consisting of five feature-length films that explore processes of creation." As film, the Cremaster Cycle is one to experience in the cinema if you have the opportunity to do so, or to experience and re-experience at leisure on DVD (the boxed set is promised for late 2004 and will be a gem for lovers of art-cinema fusion

Compared to "Cremaster 4" and especially "Cremaster 1", "Cremaster 5" is something of an improvement. It's much less silly and pretentious than those previous installments, and the annoying symbolism is a little less annoying. Throughout, there are very good visuals, and some beautiful music, but it is highly flawed. It's far too long than it should be, and it does have its fair share of eye rolling artiness, but it's still fairly fascinating.

Unlike previous "Cremaster Cycle" films, there isn't too much for me to say about "Cremaster 5". It is neither good or bad enough to get a very lengthy, detailed review. Overall, it's a decent art film that could have been better if it was a bit shorter.

Okay, I have seriously invested my time in the entire cycle, plus "restraint," several interviews and "Destricted."

I now feel qualified to report that I reject the man, though a couple of these films (Restraint and C1 in particular) gave me moments of high pleasure. I am, I discover, a man whose eye- mind prefers Greenaway, Ruiz, Maddin. Barney and Bunuel are mildly interesting voyages to the other side of town. But I find them effete, powerless. They make sloppy essays that don't reach my soul, that may be good for Budapest coffeehouse discussions, but not the sort of thing that matters.

Honestly, you can only judge an artist by the souls he touches, and Barney does have a critical mass of recruits. The best I can do is tell you why I am not among them. I need either narrative, the stuff of narrative unassembled but situated, or metanarrative... or even antinarrative. No matter what stance or how coherent, I want parts or wholes situated in a world. Don't care much about the nature of the world, as long as it exists somewhere, somehow, I can reach it.

Barney's parts are all borrowed. He didn't see them, he didn't know them, he didn't relate them — he only collects. I can get a colorful collection anywhere. Real randomness may be rare, but apparent randomness is amazingly common. I could have 12 Barneys before breakfast, and each one as sexually deviant, his only locating trait.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

The profound tedium of the movie is mitigated only by its pretentiousness. I spent most of the movie cringing. I am deeply embarrassed for those who claim to find some value in it. Unless you think Peter Greenaway movies suffer only from having too gripping plots, I urge you to avoid Barney's films at all costs.

The last and best installment in Matthew Barney's epically deranged five-part cycle. (OK, it was the third to be shot, but isn't that typical of Barney's approach to plot logic?) Cremaster 5 is everything you might expect from the other films, only more so - lushly operatic, wildly overblown, madly pretentious. Either hypnotic or unwatchable, depending on your frame of mind. If you've ever adored a film by Ken Russell or Alejandro Jodorowsky or Sergo Paradjanov, you may revel in the bizarre and campy world Barney creates. If not, you should run very fast in the other direction - and don't even stop to catch your breath!

Shot in the Art Nouveau splendour of the Budapest Opera House, this film stars the ever gorgeous Ursula Andress as the Queen of Chains. (Ooh, tie me up please!) Incredibly, this 60s Bond icon contributes the closest thing to acting ever seen in a Barney film. As she lip-synchs to Jonathan Bepler's luscious Mahler-esque score - in Hungarian, no less - her eyes overflow with dark seduction and tragic melancholy. As if Honeychile Ryder (the bikini-clad Venus from Dr. No) had turned into Phaedra or Medea in her not-quite old age.

Powerless to rival such splendour, Matthew Barney - tyro of the avant-garde art scene - spends his time crawling ever so slowly round the proscenium of the opera house stage. Rides through Budapest on horse-back, throws himself off a bridge into the Danube. (Does this mean there will be no Cremaster 6?) In a dazzling finale, he rises out of a swimming pool brimming with water-nymphs (and why not?) A flock of doves flutter about triumphantly, tied by long silken ribbons to his naughty bits.

If the above description makes you retch, do not go near this or any other film in the Cremaster cycle. But if your mind is ever-so-slightly warped, prepare to have it blown wide open. With the triumph of drab minimalism in so many branches of the arts, including cinema (Dogme, anyone?) Barney's work is something to savour and celebrate. If you can sit through it in the first place.

David Melville