Ok, one movie down, four to go...
Cremaster 3 was just completed, yet is the middle film in the series of five. It has taken the last eight years for Barney to make this film. The rest of the series will be shown starting in a week.
The first part of the film follows the Entered Apprentice, played by writer/director Matthew Barney, as he scales the Crysler Building to the Masonic Cloud Club at the top. The interiors of this building and club are stunning, all inlays and Art Deco.
Like Barney's performance art, there is a lot of literal climbing. Cars smash another car to bits in the lobbey. Mafia-like men engage in secret handshakes and rituals. Para-Olympic athelete Amy Mullins chops potatoes with special prosthetic legs.
There was an old fashioned intermission in the middle of the three hours. It was a nice break. You could tell by the conversation that everyone was really just waiting to see what happened next.
The second part of the film was set primarily in the Guggenheim Museum, where the Entered Apprentice was again climbing the structure. Amy Mullins appeared as a cheetah with really cool prosthetics! One level of the museum was Agnostic Front vs. Murphy's Law, with a big slam circle between the two bands. Richard Serra was pouring melted Vaseline down a slot that ran along the edge of the museum ramps.
Great visuals and use of color. Great music, with lots of different cultural sounds. I can't really say how this fits in as the middle of the series, as I have to see the rest of it to see just where this fits into the evolutionary storyline.
- Rae
