Bionicmanenator

Matt Barney, creator of the visually stunning CREMASTER series, documents the making of his latest work DRAWING RESTRAINT 9 (screening later in the festival) aborad the whaling ship Nissin Maru, made over something like a week with his celebrity wife (and soundtrack contributor) Bjork.

Barney always creates strong, yet perplexing images, but if you go into this documentary expecting an explanation of his themes or metaphors you will be sadly disapointed. Instead this is an examination of the construction of this particular work - the actualising of giant vaseline sculptures, some intricate prosthetic work, and the evolution of the "Drawing Restraint" series.

As a person, Barney seems quite grounded next to his rather outlandish work and the those film seems to enjoy this contradiction, and looks quite deeply into his early home life, growing up as quite a "normal" football plying adolescent.

While providing some interesting insights into the man and his world, I found myself quite often wandering mentally from this document as there was really not enough meat on the bones of this film to engage. I was expecting a whole lot more.