Cremaster: Ascension and descension
Watching Matthew Barney’s Cremaster 4 and 5 at the Filmmuseum on Tuesday, we kept thinking ‘I get it now’, and ‘Oh, that’s symbolic for…’, and ‘Surely that must mean…’, “OMG, beyond Freudian…’, but mostly, ‘Um… maybe not.’
I kept looking for clues, for… story, rather than meaning, in these dialogue-free films, but the images and sound, though mostly compelling, made the kind of sense that’s, well, not. A tap dancing satyr, a diva, Houdini, a hero, motor cyclists, the Isle of Man, water, Ursula Andress singing in Hungarian, a horned ram, goo, Budapest, doves and wandering gonads…
Did you know ‘Cremaster’ is the name of a muscle? To be precise, it’s the muscle that raises and lowers the scrotum.
Barney, according to the booklet we picked up from the theater, is obsessed with the human body and the cycle of life. That much was clear. We came away from the films impressed and bewildered, but convinced that perhaps there was no story to either film, and that the imagery was just what it was.
How wrong we were. The synopses on the Cremaster cycle website reveal the elaborate truth, the complex mix of myth and biology. It’s all bollocks, ‘course but isn’t that art? Beautiful bollocks? I buy it.
Unfortunately, I won’t be able to catch part 1 and 2 (though there’s a remedy), which are only on in the daytime, but I’ve booked to see part 3 next Sunday. Did you know Barney is Mr Björk? ‘Course you did.
