The short answer is: a bunch of nattily dressed 1930s types doing weird, pointless deeds in the Chrysler Building. The long answer includes a destruction derby in the lobby, an art-deco elevator filled to the brim with cement, an intermission and the prosthetic genitals of an entirely new sex. The question? Oh, the question: just what can you expect in avant-garde artist Matthew Barney’s newest film, “Cremaster 3”? It premiered last week at a benefit for the Guggenheim in New York. The packed house of artsies and beautiful people–or the 60 percent of them still in their seats after the break–seemed to dig it, although varying degrees of cluelessness did abound.
“Cremaster 3” is the fifth and final film in Barney’s baroque series of increasingly lavish and lengthy movies on the general themes of sexual reproduction, death and resurrection. “Cremaster 3” won’t be turning up at your neighborhood cineplex, however. The next chance anybody has to see it will be when Barney’s exhibition of “Cremaster 3’s” props-as-sculpture opens in Cologne next month, before it comes to the Guggenheim in February. The cremaster, by the way, is a muscle that controls the ascent/descent of the testicles. You had to ask.
