By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Matthew Barney
Starring: Björk | Matthew Barney
Country: japan, united_states
Year: 2006
Running time: 135
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0446685/
Bruce says: “If you have a taste for the bizarre, then this is a film for you. Matthew Barney (CREMASTER CYCLE) is known
for his outrageous stories and his ability to dazzle visually. Barney’s craft is as likely to be found in an art museum as on a theater screen since his reputation was initially made as a visual artist.
“Heavily influenced by Shinto, the ancient Japanese religion emphasizing the sacredness of all humanity and elements of nature, the actual context of what happens on the screen is impossible to grasp for the casual observer. The Nissin Maro, a Japanese whaling ship, travels across the sea from island to island and picks up a female guest (Björk) clad in a diaphanous
bright pink tent dress then adds a fur clad male guest (Barney) with an ever so trendy bushy beard. On deck a mold, in the shape of an ellipse centrally dissected by a narrow rectangle, is created and filled with oils extracted from whale blubber. During the course of the film, the substance gels and is carved up into pieces by deckhands.
“No dialogue is spoken (there is one line of untranslated dialogue) for the first hour of the film. Visually the film does not disappoint – always intriguing, yet never quite lovely in a lush sense. Every motion, every action, is a mystery. Much time is spent on rituals: parades featuring creatures such as a blue octopus, a pig and a bull; women in white diving for shellfish; and Björk bathing in a tub filled with floating oranges. Björk and Barney are ominously groomed (Matthew Barney loses his beard and even his eyebrows) and costumed in the belly of the ship. The camera moves slowly and the elegantly through wide open spaces and the claustrophobic corridors. It may shock some viewers in the final scenes when Björk and Barney are locked in a room that begins to flood. As machetes and knives slice underwater carving into each other’s skin and cutting each other’s legs off, they feed each other bits of flesh. Slowly they morph into sea creatures, perhaps whales. 3.5 cats”