Cremaster 2 is one of the strongest -- I won't say best because the 5 films are "best" taken as a whole -- but one of the strongest and most challenging episodes of the series. To say that the film is numbing is not really the point -- everyone has their own idiosyncratic negative reactions to some part or other of the series -- the music in Cremaster 1, for example, drove me crazy. One of the strong points of Cremaster 2 is that it is not as circular as the others -- the film starts in the nineteenth century and passes through Utah in the seventies and ends somewhere on a glacier -- there is linear movement. Because the story of Gary Gilmore is familiar to anyone who has read The Executioner's Song, and because this is the only film in the series that includes dialog, it is clearest in this film how and why Barney is breaking down the tradition narrative form. Thus, because this film uses traditional art elements -- and borrows from another work of art (Mailer) -- Barney is actually working from a more limited (and conventional) palette and is not just "out there" in a universe completely of his own making. The effect is devastating. The Executioner's Song was not entirely about Gilmore either, it was meant to confer some kind of broad idea about American masculinity and working class frustration. The book was considered groundbreaking when it came out, it did not fit into any conventional non-fiction format. Barney shatters the old forms of biography and destiny even more. Someday people will understand Barney better -- that he is not breaking with narrative conventions because he wants to, but because he has to. This is a deep film about nature and conflict and it is not necessary to be fluent in "Barnese" to get it. It is important to not let Barney be hijacked by movie criticism -- he is actually much more relevant to literary and visual art traditions, which are older traditions and the ones with which Barney is engaged in dialog. Not film...
