Austin360 Movies: 'Cremaster 3' Reviews -- Jeanne Claire van Ryzin, AA-S Art Critic

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'Cremaster Cycle'

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Starring: Varies from film to film
Director: Matthew Barney
MPAA rating: Not Rated
Running time: Check with Dobie Theatre
Release date: July 11
Where "Cremaster 3" is playing.

Check with the Dobie Theatre for dates and times. All five parts of the cycle play for a limited time.

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A trip through the epic 'Cycle'

'Cremaster 1' is a bizarre musical number played out at Bronco Stadium in Boise, Idaho.

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A cycle of images both arresting and cryptic

By Jeanne Claire van Ryzin
American-Statesman Art Critic

Posted: July 11, 2003

The "Cremaster Cycle" is exhilarating and exhausting, seductive and offensive, sensuous and strident. You can struggle to decipher Matthew Barney's many symbols, or you can sit there and let all of his extraordinary imagery wash over you. I suggest the latter.

For those of us who admire art that puts a big mark on the world -- Wagner's four-part 20-hour Ring operatic cycle, the six-hour drama "Angels in America," massive art installations like Richard Serra's "One-Ton Prop (House of Cards)," made of literally a ton of steel -- the sheer scale of Barney's work is mesmerizing. Those who don't cop to saturated imagery on an epic scale and at a glacial pace will have a harder time finding an entry point to the "Cremaster Cycle." After all, as Barney himself told a recent interviewer: "I wouldn't expect everybody to be interested in it."

Barney didn't create the five films in order (he started with "Cremaster 4" in 1994 and finished with "Cremaster 3" last year.) And that's as good an invitation as any to see them in any order.

The Dobie Theatre is presenting the entire five-film series over the next week, bundling the first two segments and the last two together for single showings. The three-hour "Cremaster 3" is presented individually and with an intermission. The films have no MPAA rating but contain adult situations, violence and nudity and are for mature audiences only.

"Cremaster 1" -- Monday and Tuesday: 12:30 p.m., 3:50 p.m., 6:40 p.m., 10 p.m. (46 minutes, 1995). Above a football stadium, two Goodyear blimps mirror the Busby Berkeley-esque spectacle made by smiling, hula-hoop-wearing showgirls on the blue AstroTurf field. The bizarre musical number is choreographed by a bleach-blond siren who is in both blimps simultaneously, arranging grapes into diagrams that the dancers mimic.

"Cremaster 2" -- Monday and Tuesday (with "Cremaster 1"): 12:30 p.m., 3:50 p.m., 6:40 p.m., 10 p.m. (79 minutes, 1999). Author Norman Mailer plays Harry Houdini opposite Barney as killer Gary Gilmore (who may have been Houdini's grandson) in this gothic western. Gilmore's execution is staged as a prison rodeo. In a strange sequence, Barney mixes Gilmore's murder of a Mormon gas station attendant with a Texas two-step scene and other disparate images. and a scene in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir also get mixed in.

"Cremaster 3" -- Today through Sunday; repeats Thursday: 12:30 p.m., 4:20 p.m., 8:15 p.m. (182 minutes, 2002). If you see just one of the "Cremaster" films, this should be it. Not only is it the centerpiece of the cycle, it also has the most tangible narrative, best production values and biggest budget ($5 million). The three-hour epic revolves around the construction of the Chrysler Building. Sculptor Richard Serra plays The Architect (Hiram Abiff, purportedly the architect of Solomon's Temple) while Barney plays the Entered Apprentice. The film combines abundant references to the Masonic initiation rite during which an apprentice is transformed into a master. In Barney's version, the apprentice cheats his rites of passage, murders the architect and is thus killed by the Chrysler Building.

"Cremaster 4" -- Wednesday: 12:30 p.m., 3:50 p.m., 6:40 p.m., 10 p.m. (42 minutes, 1994). Filmed on the Isle of Man, the first "Cremaster" film Barney made features motorcycle races and Barney dressed as a tap-dancing, fiery-headed goat-boy. He dances through a slowly eroding floor on the Queen's Pier, eventually falling through. Reaching land, he burrows through a gooey channel and is greeted by a trio of fairies. Filmed on a shoestring budget of $200,000, it has the shakiest production values of the "Cremaster Cycle" but is still a polished work.

"Cremaster 5" -- Wednesday (with "Cremaster 4"): 12:30 p.m., 3:50 p.m., 6:40 p.m., 10 p.m. (54 minutes, 1997). Ursula Andress stars in this dark, opulent quasi-opera performed by the Budapest Opera and Philharmonic Orchestra in the beautiful 19th-century Budapest Opera House. Barney plays both a magician (with plenty of references to Harry Houdini, who was born in Budapest) and a giant.