Cremaster 5

"Cremaster 5" successfully breaks more rules of long-form moviemaking than anything I've seen. I had to see it twice before I really got it at all, but the first time was also plenty of fun. The "Cremaster"series is profoundly hermetic. It communicates literally and symbolically on multiple levels at the same time. Thematically, it packs a wallop. Mr. Barney is uniting our current knowledge of the body with ancient esoteric formulae for nature. "Cremaster 5", the third "Cremaster" movie to be produced, is the one that tips the scales. It's also funny and poignant.

I actually liked this one of the Cremaster-cycle best. The Greenawayish, lush baroque settings were fascinating. I liked the weird idea about the guy climbing around the stage during musical performance for the queen.

Of course, I can't explain WHY those images were so appealing: Barney seems to be searching a sort of subliminal, unconscious expressions of sexuality and sensuality, as they appear in pure, non-verbal forms, clothing, gestures, architecture, art... at least his synopsis for the Cremaster-cycle hints to this.

It also seems that during the making of Cremaster 5 Barney has had more money: it's done on film, it has Ursula Andress in the main role, and the camera work, design and details are more lavish than in the former ones. It's great someone's doing films like this.

Yes, the cinematography is superb, a spectacle to be sure, but to throw images at an audience, no matter how intriguing they may be, with no reference other than, "Gee, isn't this pretty, or provocative or unusual," in the end is nothing but intellectual masturbation. And if the fact that in the end all of this is inaccessible to perhaps all but the filmmaker (and I am assuming his actors and crew -- evidently Ursula Andress was interested enough to sign on for this project), isn't bad enough (those who could call it visual poetry are really stretching it, IMHO), the music never matches the opulent visuals. I got the feeling looking at some of the stunning images that Barney creates, that the music is pretty lame in comparison. Quite truthfully, I wouldn't sit through this noise if it didn't have the visuals and I wouldn't want to watch the visual more than once. It's the kind of thing kids in Film School do on their first film exercise, only they don't have the huge amount of money that evidently Barney had to get this thing put on 35mm film.

About the only positive note that I can say for this pretentious extravaganza would be that mercifully, it is under an hour. BUT, that said, remember this is only one of the CREMASTER quintology. That's right, boys and girls, there are, count 'em, five of these things. The idea that people have actually suffered through four more of this man's self-indulgence....well, I guess there is more masochism out there than meets the eye.

So this was the last Cremaster movie. After seeing all five, this was definitely the worst. Yes, the images, the visuals, the costumes etc. were beautiful and all that. But its 55-minute runtime seemed like two hours, it just went on and on and on... it's not worth explaining. It's basically an opera, with something to do with the sea and mermaids... Okay, so you're wondering, is it worth it to see the entire Cremaster Cycle parts 1-5? The answer is no, unless you're curious to see everything Matthew Barney can do (believe me, very little ends up on the cutting-room floor). You can see Cremaster 4 or 1 and spare yourself the rest, they're just not worth it. Matthew Barney does have an original vision, he just needs to find a way of making it less boring. My job is boring, I don't need to make a movie out of it. Though it's probably more interesting then Cremaster 5. I give this 3 out of 10.

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