![]() I think a lot of the decisions that are made in regards to duration and balance are about trying to describe an organism that has its own pulse and that has its own behavior." -Matthew Barney on creating films ( The Believer ) ![]() "I tend to think of it in organic terms I tend to think of it as a body. There are these women singing, and the camera is going around the table, and Matthew comes in and says, “Can you guys be a little more natural?”-Maggie Gyllenhaal It smelled so bad I thought I was going to pass out. Then we walk into the studio and there’s this decaying pig and maggots in the food. Someone asked me if I wanted tiger balm up my nose. But don't take my word for it - here, Barney, his cast and critics tell provocative anecdotes that give us some idea of what it’s like in the mind and on set of “ The art world Houdini of visual spectacle.": ![]() And more.įilm, installation, musical spectacle: the process is intriguing and groundbreaking. For River of Fundament, add tugboats, the Brooklyn Bridge, a floating replica of Norman Mailer's apartment, undead characters painted gold, a contortionist, a dead pig. Barney is a former star footballer to whom the football field and the film set are kin: live sex, endless supplies of prosthetics, extreme physical endurance, opera singers, dance troupes, Goodyear blimps, rolling racks of period costumes, and Barney’s signature material Vaseline are to be expected. Imagine a Lars von Trier epic with help from Robert Altman and David Lynch. Sitting through it is a feat, but a worthy one. Maggie Gyllenhaal, Paul Giamatti, Ellyn Burstyn, Elaine Stritch and Jonathan Buffalo Mailer, a son of Norman, also star. Themes of reincarnation and Egyptian mythology (and excrement) bounce and tangle like laundry around the stormy clothesline of the operatic, meditative, sometimes overbearing soundtrack composed by Jonathan Bepler from the site-specific performances of Native American chanters, barbershop quartets, opera singers, violinists and.crowds of extras.Īimee Mullins is, once again Barney’s leading lady. The film is loosely based on Norman Mailer’s 1983 novel Ancient Evenings. Live sex, prosthetics, extreme physical endurance, opera singers, dance troupes, Goodyear blimps, and Barney’s signature material Vaseline are to be expected. ![]() Fundament is seven years in the making, and Barney composed cinema from raw and elaborate live performances that morphed into something more like rituals or séances involving cast and audiences (along with football jerseys, molten iron, rotting industrial objects and the scooped out carcass of a cow) than the opera Barney first conceived the project as. Now, Barney’s next marathon film, River of Fundament is playing at BAM through this weekend before heading all over the world, all 5.5 hours of it. “Cinema and Art have circled each other, squared up to each other, over the years, but only occasionally come together, as here, convincingly.” “It is one of the most imaginative and brilliant achievements in the history of avant-garde cinema,” wrote The Guardian’s critic Jonathon Jones of the Cremaster Cycle, Barney’s 2002 manic, bestial, opulent, sweeping, majestic, grotesque film series based on Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song. Imagine a Lars von Trier epic with help from Robert Altman and David Lynch. Merging performance, sculpture and the indescribable onto the big screen, Barney’s films are epic and definitely not linear. Matthew Barney’s films divide and unite critics and the general public alike. ![]()
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