Drawing Restraint 9 (Trailer)

I recently went to see Matthew Barney's new film Drawing Restraint 9 at a local screening room. I was quite excited to actually get to view the latest work of an artist I have increasingly grown to admire. Having taken quite an interest in his prevoius Cremaster Cycle, I wondered what he had in store for me this time around.

Much like his earlier films, this piece featured many scenes of ritual or what hink of as "the practice of process." There are many things we take for granted in our everday lives which could be considered ritual: getting your morning coffee, shaving for work, preparing your tools for whatever job you do, or even eating a meal with your friends. Whereas the Cremaster Cycle, to me, seemed to focus on the rituals of American culture and in another aspect on the rituals involved in the making and appreciation of art; Drawing Restraint 9 began to use these ritual narratives to support a dialogue between what we do for spiritual reasons and what we do for material needs.

I don't want to give too much away for those who haven't seen it, but there were several scenes that I found to be quite interesting. The first was the scene in which a large tanker truck is lead toward the shipyards in a mock-parade. It is preceded by two large animals and a calvacade of celebrators. Looking upon this as a praise-giving event in these peoples lives, I found the juxtaposition of the beasts of burden, modern and primal, to be very well shown. Shortly thereafter Barney arrives to the large whaling vessel and looks like, quite frankly, either an unshaven beast or how I think Hemmingway would have dressed in his prime. His large fur coat and lengthy beard present him as either a savage or perhaps a once civilized man returning from a lengthy journey. He is then shaven by the ship's barber and proceeds to take off his coat to reveal the somewhat common dress of a denim shirt and denim pants. I see this as a direct connection to Cremaster 2 and the Western "cowboy" imagery shown throughout. The shaving ritual, done with such care and precision, made me instantly think of the transformation of self and as well the cleansing rituals needed to enter into a new state.

The other sequence of scenes that I truly found exciting were the transformation of the two guests into mythological beings. Through alteration of dress, customs, and in the end form; the two main characters express a natural process (mating) through a carefully executed ritual (tea ceremony/body mutilation.) In a cacophony of blood, tea, and petroleum jelly a ritual is completed that at the same instantly repulses and compels our senses into looking. There was something unsettling about the petroleum jelly filling the enclosed space and most probably forming into a gel around them. The globules of blood gracefully dancing in their secluded primordial environment, became frightening but yet delicately beautiful.

All in all I was delightfully inspired and wished that I could have seen the physical works and photos immediately after the viewing.