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Review #133 of 365
Film: Drawing Restraint 9 [NR] 153 minutes
WIP™ Scale: $12.00
Where Viewed: Landmark Varsity Theatre, Seattle, WA
When 1st Seen: 24 May 2006
Time: 5:00 p.m.
Dedicated to: Uncle Charles
A review of Drawing Restraint 9 will go nowhere without a few ground rules. First, is this a movie or isn't it? If it isn't, it shouldn't be reviewed as a movie. What is a movie? At the core, a movie is a series of images displayed one after another to communicate motion of objects by projecting light through them to recreate what a person would see if a person were there when the images were recorded. Ok, so this was a movie. And, therefore, it should be judged like any other movie. This, movie, however, is unlike just about any other movie you may have ever seen unless you've seen a lot of avant-garde art films. As I have mentioned in previous reviews, I come from a family of visual artists, sculptors, painters, animators, technical draftors, etc., some professionally educated and some self-educated. All very talented in his or her own ways and realms. Therefore, the discussions as to what is art has come up a time or two at the dinner table. For the least talented of the visual artists, that being me, my first 'bad' experience with this question came in 7th grade at DePere Junior High School in DePere, Wisconsin when my visual arts teacher gave me a C- on a piece of work I had done and a C+ on my sketch book. I was furious. "How can he grade my artwork? Would Picasso's junior high school art teacher have given him a C-?" I demanded my parents call him. They refused. I talked to him myself. That went nowhere. In my mind, I couldn't and to this day sometimes don't, know how it is possible to evaluate another person's art. And, yet, in effect, that's the job of the art teacher, the job of the art critic, indeed, the job of the film critic. And judging films is one of the most challenging because, unlike other forms, there can be 100s of different types of art involved in a film from costume design to photographic effects to the acting itself. So, evaluating something that is really the cumulative blending of the works of hundreds and hundreds (ever really read the credits) of artists is a daunting and humbling process. Probably, too often, we take too much for granted, give too little credit to those that deserve it most, and minimize the effort down to one quotable phrase that can be attached as a stamp of approval in a marketing campaign. One of the solutions some critics find tempting is to use a Cartesian approach and break the film down to its parts and analyze each independently giving criticism to each part. This should be done, probably, only out of shear frustration, however. I know I did it once for the film Ultraviolet. I was just so frustrated trying to figure out what to give it for a rating. I broke it down. Really, though, this is a senseless concept since a movie is not a creation that can be subjected to a mechanistic evaluation in a way that brings any true meaning. Evaluations for films work better when they are given a systems analysis that accounts for the interaction of the parts and the result as we so often find is far greater than the sum of the parts. In fact, you will know this to be true if you stop and think about it, you have seen movies that were quite simple yet they really moved you in some way. Something emerged from the coalescence of the various parts to impress you and reach you and tingle your romantic sensibility. So, in the end, for me, whether rightly or wrongly, I ascertain whether a movie was good or not via some systems analytics that occur in my mind, heart, and soul where the parts of the film interact and something greater or lesser emerges. Movies that evoke something lesser would definitely be classified as "not good". Those that evoke more, would be classified as "good". Some would describe this as a gut feeling. In your gut, how do you feel by the end. You don't necessarily have to feel good. I did not feel good at the end of Munich. But, I did feel that something great had emerged. I left feeling, "That was a great movie."
With all that said, there is another little nuance to discuss, and this is the notion some people call Art for Art's Sake. Because an artist creates something and it means something to him or her, and it might mean something to others, maybe even the same thing. Is it art? I would say the question is irrelevant. Art is in the eyes, hearts, minds, and souls of the beholders be they the original artist or others. And, I don't have a problem with that. If some people love Picasso and others hate Picasso, and I don't mean to pick on Picasso, because the person I should be picking on is Matthew Barney since he is the artist that has spawned this film Drawing Restraint 9, so if some people love Matthew Barney and others loathe his work, that's fine. That doesn't make his work good or bad. Ah hah. You see there, just because some people like an artist's work and other dislike it is not a reflection on the work. I don't think you can say, "no one likes this woman's work, therefore it's no good," or "everyone loves his work, it's brilliant". Whether someting is or isn't art is not determined by the vote. What really bugs me, however, is when someone is critical of another person who doesn't like a particular piece of art or an artist, using the comments, "You just don't get the art." Maybe the person gets the art all too well, but still hates it. It must be fully possible to understand a piece of art and still not to like it. It also bugs me when one person attacks another person for not liking a piece of art, when, they deep down only like it because they think they are supposed to like it. If you don't like the Mona Lisa, that's ok. You shouldn't have to defend yourself, and no one should attack you for your stance. They can disagree with you, and argue with you, and ask you to support your position which could be nothing more than you just don't like that crooked half-smile if you want and leave it at that. In a free society, people should be able to formulate their own opinions as to whether or not they like something.
As a critic, therefore, I feel my duty is to inform to a degree, and then to give my opinion. Not necessarily to persuade anyone else to think like me. Rather, to help them put their own opinion in context.
Now, finally, on to Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint 9. Say what you will about Matthew Barney and his art work, but the logic, reasoning, and study behind it is astounding. His massive, multi-year undertaking to understand and reveal the relationship between growth/development through obstacle or restraint has been an incredible journey leading to the production of 150 works of art in mixed media and ultimately, this film, Drawing Restraint 9. The entire collection is only on exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. I'd like to go see the work at some point, because, my sense is that the visual art pieces and installations help inform his overall message and concept. For me, the movie is an integral piece of the puzzle. For me watching the film was like becoming a part of his art work. Now, when you think about that, it's kind of cool. For, in that sense, what happens is that watching the film becomes something very different. You are not just sitting there watching a great story with great special effects, acting, costumes, lighting, sound design, unspool before your eyes, you in effect are now part of the art. If you were a giant being from outer space, and this is a systems theory tool you can use to analyze your circumstances instead of a mechanistic tool where you would break things down and analyze the function and form of each part, so, imagine you are a giant and you took the lid off the theatre and looked in.
"...watching the film was like becoming a part of his [Matthew Barney's] art work. Now, when you think about that, it's kind of cool."At first, you might just see a lot of little beings sitting in various states of discomfort (because this is a long movie) with glassy eyes or focused looks staring at the wall with flashing images. And what you would not see and not be able to see if you were looking only mechanistically at the circumstances as they were presented is that the images that were flashing by were having an impact on the people's minds as they watched. And, eventually, after opening similar boxes all over the area, you might see this sort of thing everywhere and draw the false conclusion that, at the best of your systems analyses, these movie things impact people: they bring joy, amusement, horror, sadness, curiosity—the whole range of emotions. And, I write, "false conclusion" only in reference to your gazing in on those watching Drawing Restraint 9 versus all the others. For, if you could delve further into those DR9 viewers and really get at the film and observe them and what's happening to them, you might see that they are the muscles and the film itself is the restraint against which they must exercise. Think of the film as a Bowflex for the mind, and not in the sense of What the Bleep films, but in the sense of raw image. DR9 is not a metaphysical dialogue. It is a floating piece of ambergris (look that up if you don't know what it is and you'll be kind of grossed out but, remember, the exercise) captured by whalers and transported to a ship where a gargantuan mold of petroleum jelly-like stuff has been poured to use in a ritual of shrimp and some other stomach-produced substance while an on-going, incredibly stylized, ritualistic, Japanese tea ceremony for a western man and woman (played by Mr. Barney and Björk--who also composed the music for the film) occurs on a lower deck and culminates in an extraordinarily disturbing set of scenes and images the likes of which might well have made Eli Roth, the writer and director of Hostel, shudder with revolt. So, while the artist himself speaks and writes eloquently about all of the images and themes and the ways he conveys them in this film, I say that really, what he has done is ingeniously grafted the viewers of the film into a giant scale extension of his work. For as you sit and watch these wildly unintelligible, exhaustive, painstakingly slow bursts of film depicting interspersed tasks being completed (pearl divers diving for pearls, the creation of this gigantic petroleum jelly sculpture, the capture and ceremonial interactions with the 20 foot-long piece of ambergris, the haircutting and costuming of the two tea party visitors), you, your mind, your soul, your being are suddenly conscripted into the art work as you battle to deal with all that you see and hear and the wonderment of why this exists, and you quite literally restrain yourself from just giving up and walking out—as I saw many, many people do last evening. So, for this aspect of the experience which definitely moves beyond that of the traditional movie-going experience, I applaud the film. I have never been through an experience like this, I have never been a part of a giant piece of art. The very notion, in my mind, is ingenious.
"I have never been through an experience like this, I have never been a part of a giant piece of art. The very notion, in my mind, is ingenious."As for the images that I saw…well, I mostly didn't care for them. At one point in the film, in a very rare bit of dialog, the tea-ceremony master asks his two participants after they drink the very unusual tea-like concoction he made using tools all fashioned from things found in the sea, "How does it please you?" I would have to reply, "It does not." And yet, for me that was the point. Going to the gym does not please me. Reading a medieval history text does not please me. Yet both induce growth, change, expansion of the muscles and mind. So, I don't feel the point of DR9 was to make you like or not like what you see. In fact, that is next to irrelevant. What is relevant, however, and for the film / art work to work, is that in seeing the film you are put through a grueling experience that will test your restraint, force you into discomfort, and ultimately challenge you to grow against it. Do not go to see this film unless you are prepared to accept that challenge. It is not for the feint of heart nor stomach.
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