WasAnnon
Slow pace in the most part of the movie.
Tymon Sutton
The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.
Rosie Searle
It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.
Debra Solomon / culiblog.org
Matthew Barney is the Lance Armstrong of contemporary art. In my opinion, no chef can yet lay claim to this position. Drawing Restraint 9 is also the best food-related film ever made, a lavish display of sensuality and ritual.Drew Daniel of Matmos wrote this stellar description of Barney's art practice on Björk's DR9 website: Barney is a visual artist whose ambitious, rigorous multimedia work encodes esoteric meanings while providing lushly immediate aesthetic rewards. Best known for The Cremaster Cycle, the sprawling sequence of five films made over ten years which was the subject of a recent Guggenheim retrospective, Matthew Barney's work is multimedia in execution but singularly focused in conception: tightly unified fusions of sculpture, performance, architecture, set design, music, computer generated effects and prosthetics, Barney's films deploy the full range of cinematic resources in the service of a hermetic vision rich with densely layered networks of meaning drawn from mythology, history, sports, music, and biology.This is a sexy way of saying that Barney's work is based upon his own elaborate and logical cosmology. In Drawing Restraint he playfully turns materials, forms, geometries and processes (e.g. petroleum jelly, silicone, whale blubber, ambergris, other marine excretions and accretions), cultural-historical narratives and geographic trajectories (e.g. the architecture, interior and machinery of a whaling ship, the culture of whaling, the history of a specific ship) and the experience of time (e.g. pearl oyster divers holding their breath under water, the migration of whales, a Japanese tea ceremony), into a luscious weave of deeply connected meaning and narrative.This is where chefs tend to slack off.But this is Barney's demarrage, an escape or breakaway that gives him an advantage over the rest of the 'field'. Whereas it is common for a chef to create a 'richly organized set of aesthetics' (as Drew Daniel describes Barney's approach to making art), I know of no example within the culture of contemporary haute cuisine in which a chef contextualizes elements on this level to form a total experience beyond the formal boundaries of restaurant culture. Perhaps I'm not going to the right sort of parties. I long for an haute cuisine that is less 'applied' and more autonomous.The film has as its theme, the relationship between the self-imposed resistance and the trans-formative creativity inherent in the artistic process. I offer a simplified (flattened) overview of the narrative to suggest why this film is food-related, and a plea to the chefs of the world to step up their efforts and move towards creative autonomy.
aaron-375
WARNING!!! SPOILERS THRUOUGHT!!!After having seen bits and pieces of Mathew Barney's Cremaster cycle, one expects more of the same. But then he offers up Drawing Restraint 9, and I came away, well, blown away. Cremaster was such a convoluted, mythological universe, that I tend to find it unlikely that anyone could produce a body of work that is equally accomplished, thought out, and sprawling. Watching the opening scene of Drawing Restraint, I think of Chris Marker's filmic essay, Sans Soleil. Mostly because of the reference to Japan's Holiday, Coming of Age Day. The dancing seems to be lifted right out of Marker's film. The pacing of both films is actually pretty similar, as is the content. As Marker chose seemingly disparate images and concepts to illustrate a larger commonality in his films, Barney conflates his ideas about artistic restraint with a fantasy about whaling.An extraordinary chain of events occurs in this film. A convergence of mythic proportions, in true Mathew Barney style. A whaling moratorium is lifted in Japan. Bjork and Barney's "occidental guest" characters arrive, inexplicably, by prearranged fishing boat trips in the middle of a Japanese ocean on a whaling ship. The combination of a violent storm, loosely Japanese and heavily stylized costuming, a large petroleum jelly sculpture, a riveting and very aquatic tea ceremony, some bizarre dismemberment, and a giant raw ambergris log, culminate in a human-to-whale transubstantiation for these occidental guests. The pacing of the film is generally slow for its first two thirds, with beautiful imagery of a twenty year old whaling vessel seductively competing against this restrained pace. Then the storm comes, the petroleum begins to consume the entire ship, and there is no more restraint. At its core, this is what the film is about. Barney's obsession with restraint, and his fearful desire to let it go. The Coming of Age Day dance speaks about evolution, from childhood to adulthood. This evolution is echoed throughout the film. The first song, composed by Bjork and Barney, speaks of a "million year old fossil", which is then lovingly wrapped, and sent as a thank you for lifting the whaling moratorium (again, restraints are released, allowing for a thriving economy and plenty of food in a previously depressed community, ethical issues of whaling notwithstanding). The petroleum and steel sculpture, The Field, goes through a constant evolution, from liquid petroleum, to something a little more solid, changing shape, having a spinal cord like object removed from it, briefly housing the ambergris log, then utterly falling apart and being melted down into liquid again. All of this preparing, changing, waiting, is the restraint part of this equation. Then something, in this case ambergris and a storm, catalyzes a strange metamorphosis, and Bjork and Barney turn into whales. Barney must have undergone a similar process with this work, this ninth part of the Drawing Restraint whole being the product of that internal metamorphosis I am imagining for Barney. In all its grandiosity, all of Barney's timid pomp, its actually a very honest expression of fear. Fear of release, accomplishment, potential energy, and the unknown.
johnnykocktail
I originally saw this at it's Toronto Film Festival premiere. I went alone and allowed myself to be drawn in slowly, almost becoming hypnotized by it. The film is like a long, bizarre, beautiful dream that made me feel like I was high on some wonderful drug.The imagery is stunning, inspired! Bjork's soundtrack is perfect. Both Barney and Bjork provide compelling performances. What more can be said except see this film and let it speak to you. Its a wonderful opportunity to see some experimental film by a truly gifted artist (or pair of artists, including Bjork's significant contributions)Take a chance, it'll be worth it.
rui-franco
This has got to be one of the worst movies I've ever seen! There were people leaving the theatre, others were falling asleep (ok, it was a late night show)... This is a no-sense movie, one of those who can make you never want to see an out of mainstream picture again. I would love to watch the making-off of this movie as I am deeply interested on what goes on the minds of the authors of such garbage. Do they laugh when they create all this ridiculous stuff or do they actually think they're doing something interesting? I wonder... The soundtrack is awful apart from some instrumental stuff that reminds you of a previous Bjork album. Even if you're a fan of Bjork's music, stay home. It's the best thing to do. The little, tiny, pieces of nice music are no reason for you to go out and submit yourself to this torture. God!...
