Director: Matthew Barney
Screenplay: Matthew Barney
Cast: Matthew Barney as the Engraver; Eleanor Bauer as the Calling
Virgin; K.J. Holmes as the Electroplater; Laura Stokes as the Tracking Virgin; Anette
Wachter as Diana; Sandra Lamouche Yellowhorn as the Hoop Dancer
An Abstract List Candidate
We begin this review with the
fact that I can even cover the following. The legend of Matthew Barney, artist/filmmaker, comes with the caveat that unless
seen in a grey market form or through special screenings, his cinematic work
since he started as an artist have been difficult to see. Famous for the Cremaster Cycle, five pieces filmed out
of order from 1994 to 2003, the series was only possible to see in theatrical
screenings. Cremaster 3 (2003), the
magnum opus, had a segment within it released commercially on DVD, but the
series was only possible to legally own through limited edition DVDs in
specially created cases1.
My university, in the City of
Lincoln, had the commercially released DVD, released by Palm Pictures, and its content has been etched in my mind. Set at
the Guggenheim Museum, the segment released on DVD was entitled "The Order", following Barney's own character of "the Entered
Apprentice" scaling the inside and overcoming a series of obstacles. From rival
mosh pits of duelling hardcore bands - Agnostic
Front and Murphy’s Law - to
Paralympics athlete Aimee Mullins as a half-cheetah/half woman, that one
sequence by itself shows the very unconventional and extravagant nature of Barney's work. If you even see images of
Barney's work, whether he is under
significant amounts of prosthetics or deliberately forcing obstacles on himself
in craft work, part of his "Drawing
Restraint" pieces, where athleticism and physical barriers were put on
himself during creation, the work from the Cremaster
era are very unconventional and aesthetically extravagant even compared to
installation artists, completely touching upon the surreal even.
Again, these films are not easily
available - including Drawing Restraint
9 (2005) which he collaborated with his then-wife Bjork, the legendary Icelandic musician, and the five plus hour
Norman Mailer adaptation/opus Rivers of Fundament
(2014)2 - but Redoubt,
his 2018, had been made available through theatrical screenings through Grasshopper Films, and in a rare moment
in Spring 2021 even available to stream on MUBI3, a rare case of his
work actually being available to see beyond a gallery setting. This however is
a more restrained piece - not of sights like a death metal drumming playing
whilst being entirely covered in real bees head-to-toe - and notably, Barney is now an older artist dressing
down in his character of an artist who crafts electroplated copper etchings in
the middle of the Sawtooth Mountains in Idaho, stepping back in his own work as
one of a small ensemble. The long prologue even for this review is necessary
before you even have to try to unpack what Redoubt
means and signifies, as it has so much to unpack.
Even the title is distinct as,
playing to a mythological tone, "Redoubt" is likely a reference to
"American Redoubt", a political migration movement first proposed in
2011 by survivalist novelist and blogger James
Wesley Rawles which designates certain areas in the north-western United
States (including Idaho) as a safe haven for conservative, libertarian-leaning
Christians and Jews4. Boise, Idaho was also where Californian born Barney was raised, making the location
in Sawtooth Mountains a step into his own life, contrasted with political
subtexts and history being touched upon in the content symbolically. That
being, effectively, a retelling of the myth of Diana and Actaeon, found in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, where Actaeon is a young hunter who accidentally
stumbles upon the goddess of the hunt in the midst of bathing, promptly turned
into a deer by her as a consequence and eventually ripped to shreds by his own
hounds as a result.
Wolves, found in the film, evoke
a huge political issue that came in the 1980s in Idaho of introducing them back
into the wild which divided conservationists against vocal figures like hunters
and ranchers, something the director-writer has explicitly evoked5.
Set within this, and a more modern political subject of the American Redoubt,
you have Actaeon as depicted as Barney,
an older man who living in a camper with a figure (dance
artist/singer/poet/actor K.J. Holmes)
who helps create between them finished electroplated etchings, a fascinatingly
(and for me, weirdly archaic and almost alchemical) process of metal plating by
way of chemical baths where Barney's copper etched work done in the snow
covered landscapes are dropped into and the electrocuted for a final finish. Playing
Diana, following by two Virgins called the Calling Virgin and the Tracking
Virgin, the "30 Cal Girl" Anette
Wachter, an NRA advocate and international long-range shooting champion
would have been able to complete all the rifle shots in this film entirely with
her own skills. Her two follows are played by Eleanor Bauer and Laura
Stokes, the former Bauer a dance
choreographer who worked on the dance sequences in the film too5.
Questions can be raised, entirely
due the more intense climate that the world was in during the later 2010s with more
tightly drawn and antagonistic political lines, about a film like this which is
not engaging with a moral message or a political opinion, but interpretation
through an dialogue-less modern myth, set entirely in the Sawtooth Mountains over
multiple "hunts", chapters divided between each other, as Barney's "Engraver" and Wachter's Diana will eventually pass
crosshairs. In truth, this is entirely for each individual viewer to consider -
likely a cop-out in opinion, but it is very clear that the film is a symbolic work
as much about the art within itself, sketched within its precise and simple
narrative, than tackling the politics. It is better Redoubt never becomes overtly political and is instead a dreamscape
of his history with Idaho and tensions within it clashing. Matthew Barney can be political or least reference the real world
when he can, such as collaborating with others on a "Remains Board",
on the exterior of his studio building in Long Island City, a large
seven-segment digital clock counting down the days and hours remaining in the
U.S. president Donald Trump's first (and only) term6.
How the film decides to present
itself works. Redoubt, benefitting
from a sense of narrative and a clear narrative, is distinct. The atmosphere of
the film, entirely dialogueless, is striking, in which slowly burning to their
conflict, the natural landscape of Sawtooth Mountains is lived in, with the
natural wildlife brought in, even to the point (as a disclaimer states in the
end credits) the production worked around simulating scenes of animals being
shot and targeted with rifles without harming them for vividness. The art
within this is as much of the film too, where the key collaborators onscreen
bring their own craft fully through. Wachter
with her real skill in rifle shooting contrasted by Bauer and Stokes as her assistants,
between them figures almost more of the landscape in their contrasting dancing
movements against the preciseness of Wachter's
hunter Diana.
The resulting emphasis is
hypnotic, one which requires a great deal to digest. The film is also aware
too, before anyone asks, this is a history of white Americana it is evoking, as
one of the only other actors within the film is Sandra Lamouche Yellowhorn. A dancer who is crossed paths with in a
town hall practicing an elaborate and beautiful dance with hoops by herself, she
is the one non-Caucasian figure whose existence is more than this, enticed by
her dances in her own space listening to music in headphones, but a poignant
reminder (as with the title) Barney
is evoking a specific part of his culture which is not the same as everyone
else's. It is poignant, as well, he is the only male within the cast, still a
prominent figure who works in his private world, etching the landscape and even
a cougar up in a tree, even killing one of the virgins during their first
crossings. Yet, with Diana and her assistances effectively immortal, he is
merely one figure, and even shooting one of the hunter's assistants does not
mean she will stay dead.
The pair of Eleanor Bauer and Laura
Stokes in particular have the most striking screen presence, first introduced
high in two trees paralleling each other on a hammock they have to ascend down
from in spins on rope, their interactions with each other whether in a spring
pool or casually as two opposites who dance or cavort around each other in the
background whilst Diana the huntress is collected, precise and silent. K.J.
Holmes as the figure with Barney's Engraver is restrained in contrast, the
figure who completes the electroplating with the elaborate system she has set
up. When the film leads to a chaotic end, actual wolves descending on the inside
of the camper and tear everything to shreds, she is calm, dancing outside at
night whilst what can be only described as an unnatural solar eclipse captured
for the film, one transpiring that sinks the moment into twilight related
frenzy.
All of this is built naturally
too, and honestly, with a lot greater power than most traditional storytelling
and without any dialogue. Redoubt is
effectively "avant-garde", but its construct and form is easy to
understand and compelling as a tale, the myth it is telling told simply within
itself, and only the presentation and its tangents emphasising additional
pieces. Redoubt undeniably is part
of its own larger project, as the film exists as much with Barney's own craft
and sculptures which toured with Redoubt
itself, but again, it is a tragedy that his work exists as a rare phoenix in
terms of being able to experience. More so when with this, a subdued and less
maximalist extravagance of his earlier work I have seen snippets of, is a film of a greater artistic power and
clearness than if you attempted to make this film as a drama with dialogue and
"making sense" of.
Progress in film making
technology has helped him, as he does indeed with his cinematographer Peter Strietmann embrace the drone
camera, but the landscape of Sawtooth Mountains and its natural occupants are
utterly striking themselves, as vivid as his artificially created worlds used
beforehand. Some will be difficult content for some viewers, evoking the
hunting and shooting of animals with the potential distress involved, but is also
has the striking images of a cougar calmly in a tree among others, the beauty of
the world in this snow covered wilderness as much embraced. To my own surprise,
feeling close to them as an animal, I realise magpies are carnivores in terms
of being at least scavengers as, whilst the film does explicitly state its
carefulness with the animals used, dead carcasses are used or were located a
filmed, and there is a scene where Barney
himself is clearly skinning a dead animal, part of the final conclusion of his
character.
Certainly, in contrast to what I
have seen, including his previous fixations of petroleum jelly and very human
made industrial materials, Redoubt
is a striking contrast, a film which is entirely set in the wilderness. If anything is artificial, it is an entirely
different aesthetic for him, where one very distinct form of craft is even
contrasted in itself when bullets are shot at the copper plates and leave their
permanent marks of impact on the easy-to-scar surfaces. If politics has to play
a part in interpretation, it would frustrate some that Barney is staying from neither side, but he is as if chronicling
the sense of tensions of this landscape, one in Sawtooth Mountains isolated
from humanity yet in this is a place where tensions mount. As its own work,
constructed, it is a thing to bask in and find so much in apparently very
simple material, something exceptional as a result.
Abstract Spectrum: Atmospheric
Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None); Low
====
1) Such as the following example
shown HERE.
2) The one exception that was
commercially available was his collaboration to Destricted (2006), a British-American anthology of conceptual
artists and filmmakers tackling pornography, which was divisive when it first
came out and has been forgotten about. (Alongside the fact that the British and
American releases are very different, with segments unique to either for DVD). Barney's - which is in both versions
alongside artist Marina Abramović,
filmmaker Larry Clark and Demolition Man director Marco Brambilla - is the meeting of the
body with industrial machinery. What it is turns out to be, with Barney in full
costume, effectively masturbating with the help of an industrial machine he is
inside, as bizarre (and with a variety of liquids involved) as you could hope.
3) I saw the first for the first
time, on MUBI, on the 13th May 2021
just to time stamp this. An early birthday gift, as I am born in that month, in
fact and the pleasure a few days before said birthday to see a Matthew Barney film was appreciated.
4) To read of in more detail,
follow the link HERE.
5) Taken from an Art News article
on the film HERE:
"“One of the stronger memories I have of Idaho was the debate that
carried on throughout the ’80s about reintroducing wolves into the wild,”
Barney said. “On one side you had the voices of people who used the
land—hunters, ranchers—and on the other you had voices of conservation. Arguments
were fierce. When I was a teenager you would hear about fights breaking out in
town hall meetings and people being dragged out of rooms. The wolf subject
couldn’t be mentioned in a bar.”"
6) Which can talked about HERE.
