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For relief from Ashley Judd, Ice Cube and Stuart Little,
Matthew Barney's non-sequential installments in his "Cremaster"
series are worth a look for those who hear "art film"
and find a more literal mental cataloguing reference than, say, a
Merchant-Ivory production. The films are abstract and nearly
inscruitable, to be sure, but they are also awkwardly internal (in
both psychology and in the logic of their consistently arbitrary
cosomology), intensely personal, meticulously ritualized,
unexpectedly moving and occasionally drop-dead gorgeous. The fact
that they're undeniably "difficult", "static"
and not "necessarily entertaining" goes without saying,
but this is not in as of itself a bad thing. The most recent
installment, "Cremaster 2" (the fourth in the series)
is probably the most high-falutin' (synch-dub dialogue and a
celebrity cast -- Norman Mailer and Slayer answering to "Cremaster
V"'s Ursula Andress) and accessible (basically a rewriting
of Mailer's "The Executioner's Song" by way of the
series' unique mythology ) of the unfinished bunch, but at the
screening I attended, being somewhat familiar (though by no means
with any real clarity) with said mythology from previous
installments, it was hard to see for all the question-mark
thought-balloons lodged over the heads of those in the rows in
front of me. Once the final installment, "Cremaster III",
arrives the possibility of a full-series screening gives one much
cause for cramming preparation.
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