Cremaster 3

Curiosity seekers… seek no more. Pretentious and `arty' could describe it… but I have to say I thought some very good work went into the production design and music. Less such into the "story". It's the top of the Matthew Barney pyramid of art films, culminating in a three hour orgy of celtic mythology, masonic legend, truly retch inducing reverse dental surgery, hardcore punk bands, beautiful models with masonic symbol pasties, double amputee model Aimee Mullins as a catwoman and with clear acrylic prosthetic legs, artist Richard Serra tossing molten vaseline against the walls of the Guggenheim, a sojourn up the elevator shafts of the Chrysler Building, a demolition derby in same's lobby… shall I go on? All the above said, the movie is still truly what it advertised itself to be. The same couldn't be said of many truly awful commercial films, i.e., "Gods and Generals" or "Gigli." You get the broken promises of entertainment and/ or involving historical drama. With C3, you get a chariot race with zombie horses, covered in blankets with the `Cremaster 3' crest emblazoned on them. And don't forget to stop in the museum's gift shop as you leave the theater. Thank you.

Glen Helfand of The Guardian was particularly astute in likening Matthew Barney's "Cremaster" films to the 'Star Wars' films. While most 'Star Wars' fanatics would walk out on the "Cremaster" films, these works, like Lucas' series, create a completely new and strange world, with each subsequent film exploring and elaborating that world.

It's easy and lazy to dismiss Barney's work as pretentious. Of course it's pretentious. It's also important. What Barney is doing is taking arcane symbols, myths and images (related to Mormonism, Freemasonry, the reproductive system, historical figures, geographic locations, etc) and making them more arcane by using them as not only the motifs in his films, but the foundations. This is pure cinematic mutation, as Barney assembles these symbols and elements and does with them what David Cronenberg does with flesh and metal. Humans and objects in The Cremaster Cycle do not behave in a recognizable way. They interact with one another in a manner that goes beyond ritualism into the realm of necessity. They're partaking in processes, not performing rituals. As The Loughton Candidate in "Cremaster 4" tap-dances his way into a womb-like tunnel inside the earth under the Isle of Man, or as a character known as 'Goodyear' incubates in a dirigible while eating grapes and excreting them through her shoe in "Cremaster 1," one realizes that these human-like figures are more like insects in their behavior. The Cremaster Cycle establishes a world in which human beings and objects behave without will, like the cells in our body or the neurons in our brain.

"Cremaster 3," three hours long, is the last film in the five-part Cremaster Cycle, and serves as a culmination -- Barney explained that he wished for the Cycle to end in the middle, as though overlooking the other two films in the series as a skyscraper might. Incidentally, one of the two primary locations used in "Cremaster 3" is The Chrysler Building, which is given a sinister, demonic presence here (as in "The Caveman's Valentine" -- what is it about the Chrysler Building?) as it becomes a vessel for all sorts of grisly goings-on. A protracted demolition derby sequence set in the Chrysler building lobby depicts a gang of five late '60s model Chryslers pummeling a vintage Chrysler, intercut by scenes of the renovation of the building's exterior -- drawing a parallel between violence and progress. The curious achievement of this sequence is that it's brutally violent and eventually hard to stomach, yet its violence is amongst vehicles, not living beings.

"Cremaster 3" is beautifully scored by Jonathan Bepler, with some arresting interactions between the music and the images. An intermission occurs at the halfway point, before which the narrative builds to a near-climax of overwhelming power (another such climax closes the film), another surprising accomplishment given Cremaster's completely alien course of events. And Barney's idea of parody is to dehumorize slapstick comedy by making it eerie, in a bar scene (redolent of Kubrick's 'The Shining') featuring the underused and distinctive-looking Terry Gillespie.

The previous reviewer obviously had no comprehension or understanding of this gloriously complex and evocative film. Cremaster 3 not only expands on themes and references explored in the previous four films but takes Barney's magical and hermetically sealed universe to new heights. The first half of the film takes place in a reconstruction of the Chrysler building, where the gender-transformed body of Gary Gilmore is unearthed and placed inside a classic chrysler car and destroyed by a fleet of other chryslers in a ritualistic demolition derby. Barney meanwhile scales the liftshaft of the building, filling one of the lifts with mud, eventually arriving at the exclusive Cloud Club where a group of masonic henchmen drink guinness. Meanwhile a mysterious woman slices potatoes with blades attached to her shoes. The second half of the film takes place in the Guggenheim museum where the levels of the museum are transformed into strange transmissions of all the previous films. Barney scales the levels of the museum interacting with the players on the different levels. On the final level is Richard Serra, recreating his famous thrown lead sculptures with melted vaseline.... Yes - it is weird, but wonderfully so. Barney is no doubt one of the most important contemporary artists around and Cremaster 3 is the final, remarkably assured piece of a puzzle that has excited and beguiled for the last 8 years and forces us to reinterpret the boundries between cinema, sculpture and performance art. A masterpiece!

I suppose you have to have already made a decision about who you a re and how cinema fits in your life to lucidly decide the first things about this. What is it and how will it speak to you?

I've now seen the "long" version and a 30 minute cut that was apparently done for exhibiting at The Guggenheim for patrons with less patience. Actually, with a different score that short version would be something useful. It isn't that the score is offensive. It is, but that's not what I'm trying to avoid. (Bjork's handling of "Restraint" was apt while annoying.) What he needs is something that plays with his symbol-universe sonically.

The short version cuts out the whole Chrysler erection sequence and shortens the Guggenheim. There's less Crisco tossing.

You may like this. It reeks of importance. It has layers of symbology, at least so far as notations and is very much like those paintings from that era when you could say: those grapes "stand for" so and so and that reclining lamb next to them "means" such and such. So okay: scots freemasonry as dedeconstruction, punk fried eggs, Dante's circles of museum hell, manufactured women except one beast goddess...

It seems for some of these he comes up with the symbol systems first, then surveys what material he has and then forms a performance out of that based on objects and himself. That's weak tea for me. "Cremaster 1" was an important and rich experience for me. That's because I believe he started with the images and built everything around that. Its really quite brilliant and I recommend it to you.

But not this. Its his own yard sale. Don't go.

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

When I got out of the theater after seeing this movie, I was stuck with one major question: how does one get the financing to make such a movie? How do you sell a movie so unusual to investors?

I must admit I desperately wanted this movie to make sense. I wanted the mason to have a legitimate reason to fill an elevator with concrete, and I wanted this reason explained later on in the movie, but I could tell the answer would never come. I know my expectations were conditioned by years of conventional cinema and storytelling. For this reason alone, Cremaster was worth watching. It stirred me up, exposed me to very personal and thorough symbolism, and made no apologies.

This movie is not cinema as you've come to know it, it's performance art caught on film. I've heard that the artist explains a lot of his symbolism on his website but I'm not sure I want to know, at least for now. I'd rather let the images simmer in my mind for a few weeks and let meaning bubble up. For now, three days after seeing it, I'd say the movie is basically about the powerlessness of the individual against the powers that be and the necessity for an artist to pander to those powers to achieve his vision. This necessity is also the struggle that drives the creative process. Lackeys and employees are numbed by their position, and some of them express themselves in a creative way to alleviate the numbness and feel alive. Whether they succeed or not is not the point.