Matthew Barney is perhaps the most groundbreaking and celebrated American visual artist of the past decade, and—like his previous Cremaster Cycle—Drawing Restraint 9 is a cinematic component of a larger exhibition involving performance art, sculpture, drawings, video installations and photography. "Combining images of modern industrialization and primitive traditions, Barney creates a world as mystifying as that of Alejandro Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain. While the significance of the imagery, including the slow disintegration of an immense piece of sculpted petroleum, is elusive, the strangeness of Barney's visual sense never fails to stimulate the senses. Dialogue is used in only one scene, [a tea ceremony, in the bowels of a Japanese whaling ship, which then turns dazzlingly repulsive] with the rest of the film's narrative powered by a soundtrack" written by his wife, Bjork. "For the first time, Barney has a collaborator who can match him, sound for sight. Bjork's soundtrack for the film is powerfully emotive, massing orchestral and electronic textures, an ancient Japanese reed pipe and her own protean voice. It is the perfect complement to Barney's images." (Toronto Film Festival) "Not since the collaborations of Godfrey Reggio and Philip Glass (Koyaanisqatsi), have music and visuals been so satisfyingly combined." (Seattle Post-Intelligencer) "Drawing Restraint 9, with its spooky parade of sinewy machines, white-robed pearl divers and the choreographed rites of two devoted lovers, marks a dazzling leap forward not for one artist, but two." (Toronto Film Festival) More at drawingrestraint.net.
2006, color, 2 hours 15 minutes, USA/Japan