Cremaster 1
Seeing one is just a frustrating curiosity. Seeing two deepens the mystery. By the third, if you're anything like me, you are hooked, and the entire series becomes one long mesmerizing dream, with the compelling and uneasy logic that entails. At times grotesque, silly, stupid, and profound, all in all it manages to be deeply moving for me by the end. It's all deeply flawed I think (too much simplistic and uninteresting cross-cutting, sometimes insipid symbolism); but the flaws actually make it easier to get a foot in the door, so to speak, and to crack the easy codes first. Perfect art would be impenetrable, and therefore inhuman. (Barney's comment on a vaseline sculpture: "It failed even more than I thought it would.")
This series of art films started in 1994 with Cremaster 4 and then continued out of order with 1, 5, 2, and finally 3 this year. This actually makes sense, since, in the overall scheme, part 3 represents the height of will, or creation, and is therefore the logical stopping point for such a large undertaking. The numerical end, part 5, represents either transcendence or failed transcendence, something that occurs in 2 as well, which in both cases is represented by willful death (Gary Gilmore or his ancestor Houdini). Part 4 is the appropriate starting point, since it represents striving but not yet attained perfection. The calamity of hubris represented in part 3 concludes the series, and perhaps makes for a sardonic self commentary on the whole series, if not art itself.
I hope to do individual posts for each film, but for now I just wanted to post two of my favorite images from the films. 2 and 5 were my favorites, but I couldn't find my favorite image from 5, an overhead shot of pearls floating in water.
Cremaster 2
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