Cremaster 5

Matthew Barney has never pretended to be rational. After gaining fame by working as a J. Crew model and by clambering all over a New York art gallery in the nude, he turned his focus to the cremaster, a muscle that raises and lowers the testicles in response to temperature changes. Three films later (Cremaster 2 and Cremaster 3 remain unfinished), he continues to create a body of work that carefully albeit confusingly depicts the forces of immaterial stimuli upon the body in a world of nymphs, magicians, and performers.

This installment begins with the arrival of the Queen of Chain (Ursula Andress), a stoic opera singer whose body is covered in black silk and whose head is a giant phallus adorned with two glass balls. As the Queen sings Hungarian opera, the men (all played by Barney with great control) are introduced: the Magician, who remains naked and hog-tied beneath his cloak; the Diva, dressed effeminately in bubblegum pink; and the Giant, immersed in a bath of pearls and naked nymphs. It all climaxes when ribbons are tied from the feet of a dozen or so pigeons to the tentacles of a colossal sea fan. As this finale indicates, Barney's hybrid of performance art and film is not for the impatient, the plot-loving, or the rational-minded. At the Harvard Film Archive Thursday April 30.

-- Ian Pervil