 |   Format : Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC Publisher : Lions Gate List Price: Our Price: $89.98 Used Price : $27.79 |
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Customer reviews
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by .. T. Crockett (Ballwin, MO)
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 3 is the longest (3hrs) and most complex of the Cycle. It charts the construction of the Chrysler Building and looks at the forces of spiritual transcendence (which can in itself be taken as a metaphor). It quotes Lombardi: "Character is an integration of habits of conduct superimposed on temperament ... Character is will, exercised on disposition, thought, emotion and action." We have a mythological prologue, then an Apprentice who scales the Chrysler Building by means of one of the lift shafts and takes part in a Masonic ritual. Before winning his Masonic instruments he must become the master of lust and his own ego. This penultimate stage is set in a section called 'The Order' comprising Five Degrees of Initiation.
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).
Barney plays the Entered Apprentice and his opponents include the Order of the Rainbow for Girls (who look a lot like the Rockettes), Agnostic Front and Murphy's Law (two New York Hardcore bands), Aimee Mullins, and Richard Serra. Molten Vaseline, dental surgery, a demolition derby by vintage Chrysler Imperial New Yorker cars and a gorgeous creature who is half-cheetah/half woman all figure in this latest edition of Matthew Barney's fever dream. Much of the action takes place in two New York landmarks, the Chrysler Building and the Guggenheim Museum, as well as at the Saratoga Racetrack (upstate NY), the Giant's Causeway (Ireland) and Fingal's cave (the Scottish Isle of Staffa).
Don't look for a DVD set anytime soon (or anytime at all) by .. Steward Willons (Illinois)
My main point in writing this is to counter the spotlight review that gives false hope of a Cremaster Cycle DVD set release. I am also taking the opportunity to comment on Barney's reasons for not releasing the films commercially. This is based on my personal research and I hope it's useful to some that may spend long hours trying to find any news of a possible DVD release as I did.
Matthew Barney has stated many times that he will never release his films on any form of mass media. His reasons have the do with the physical sculptures that he sells. He sees them as limited edition art objects and, therefore, to reproduce them would be wrong. I believe he produced six laser disc copies of each of the five films, which sold in elaborate sculptural cases. He is allowed to circulate prints for massively expensive screenings as major museums, but he feels it would be wrong to duplicate his art work.
I see it from a more economical standpoint. His films are incredibly expensive to produce and they're all privately and personally funded. Why settle for $20s per DVD when you can get hundreds of thousands for each museum screening? Perhaps it's a mixture of both. But, why use the medium of film for something that six people get to personally enjoy? We have that expectation with a painting or a photograph, but the medium of film lends itself to mass duplication. Besides that, any film employs many many individuals (actors, technicians, etc.) and it really seems like a huge waste of effort if it's going to such a limited audience. Some composers write totally uncompromising music with almost no commercial appeal, but they still disseminate them through traditional means. It's not as if no one would buy these.
I respect Barney for sticking by his ideals, but I wish he would let the rest of us in on his work. As I write this review in early 2007, the films are currently playing in Germany. It's not like most of us can drop everything and fly over there to check them out. They haven't been in the states for a while and who knows when they'll be back?
I'm giving the DVD five stars based on the small part that I've experience both there and through some of his massive picture books. I wish I could say I've seen them all, but then again, I'm supposed to be reviewing the DVD itself - the product you can actually buy.
Staple for fine art gurus by .. Grasshopper ()
Matthew Barney is continually scrutinized by artists and critics alike.
Ignore them and see his work for yourself.
Matthew Barney successfully combines both his visual and conceptual ideas in the Cremaster series through an orchestrated, cinematic production of five Cremaster cycles, shot and released out of sequence. The Order (Cremaster 3) is just one of those cycles, but is the final of the series, bringing closure to his project which has been produced over the course of a few years. The Order takes place in the Guggenheim Museum of New York, where a Tartan-clad Barney scales five levels of the Museum to confront different challenges before gaining his rite-of-passage. I won't spoil the excitement.
This dvd is cutting-edge to the modern art scene, and the only affordable version of Matthew Barney's project that has been released to the public. With an interactive feature that allows you to watch the entire cycle, each section individually, or all five sections (angles) simultaneously, I'd say anyone who purchases it is getting one hell of a deal.
Great stuff (and how to work the DVD features) by .. Crashy88 (Level 2)
Beautiful, strange, hilarious, moving, cryptic, amazing: what more can I say about this? Matthew Barney is a genius, and this is a great introduction to the whole cycle.
The DVD interface *is* confusing. The "multiangle" feature shows you what is going on (in "real" time) on each level throughout, once the Apprentice has climbed to the first level. So, pick a level from the opening screen and choose "Start". You won't see the individual "degree" intros, but you will see the showgirls introduce the Apprentice. Pressing the "angle" button on your DVD player remote won't do anything until the apprentice reaches level 1 and encounters the tap-dancing lamb-women. Then, you'll get the Cremaster field symbol in the lower right corner of the screen with regions for the different levels--choose the one you want to go to, then enjoy! What you see is what the different characters are doing on each level throughout. The "film version" intersects at various points but otherwise you do get things you don't see and hear in the regular "film version." So it's not a true multiangle feature like on other DVDs--you can't select different angles for different scenes--but I think it's even more interesting the way it is. I especially like the action on level 2 (with the punk bands playing acoustic) and level 3 (Aimee Mullins pacing her turf and later being cheetah-like), okay and level 5 with Richard Serra throwing hot vaseline. You can follow what is going on at each level by the thumbnail movies in the Cremaster field symbol and switch from level to level at will.
The director's commentary was harder for me to figure out how to access: using the onscreen interface didn't work for me, but I eventually found it using the sound option on the remote. It is surprisingly dry and factual: merely a summary of the various characters and symbols, with no amusing anecdotes about what must have been an interesting production. And not a trace of the humor that runs through Barney's art! But I guess he has to keep a dead pan over all of this for it to work.
Confused Barney Style by .. ()
The DVD is not the complete Cremaster 3 movie. Easy for most fans to figure out but if you are just getting into Barney or saw Cremaster 3 at a special showing this is only part of it. This DVD contains a 30 minute "Order" movie and then it seems a longer version using multi angle feature that is very difficult to figure out. I finally had to get on the computer to play the DVD and use the controls there find the "angles" Great art and love the work but DVD still confusing.