The Cremaster Cycle

Art and architecture collide in myriad ways in Matthew Barney's five-part epic, The Cremaster Cycle, an experimental art film that some consider to be a masterpiece and others think is pretentious, self-indulgent drivel. Barney takes viewers on a seven-hour journey that is ostensibly about the rise and fall of the cremaster muscle, which ultimately determines a person's gender. Symbolism abounds as Barney uses such objects as grapes, pearls, football goalposts, potatoes, the twisting Guggenheim Museum, the Chrysler Building, and even the Goodyear blimp to represent the testicles and the muscle itself, depicting races to convey the battle between the development of male and female secondary sexual characteristics in humans. The supremely nonlinear narrative, which is essentially impossible to follow, also involves serial killer Gary Gilmore, magician Harry Houdini, Freemason legend Hiram Abiff, and lots of Vaseline. Barney, who plays multiple roles himself, also cast such non-actors as sculptor Richard Serra, writer Norman Mailer, and athlete, model, and double amputee Aimee Mullins, in addition to Bond girl Ursula Andress, who stars as a Hungarian opera singer. The films feature bright colors, majestic sets, bizarre costumes, and virtually no dialogue at all, teasing the audience with mysterious, often indecipherable scenes that are still vibrant and compelling, designed like individual works of art, visual poems that challenge the viewer to stick it out no matter how confused they are by the events occurring on-screen. A one-of-a-kind cinematic experience, The Cremaster Cycle is a massive undertaking that Barney has vowed will never become available on DVD.