Film Forum

From the boundlessly fertile/febrile imagination of Matthew Barney, creator of the epic CREMASTER cycle. In REDOUBT, the myth of Diana and Actaeon unfolds in Idaho’s majestic Sawtooth Mountains, with Diana played by real-life sharpshooter Anette Wachter. She’s accompanied by two nymphs on a wolf hunt (one, Eleanor Bauer, choreographed the film’s gravity-defying movements); Barney is the Engraver/forest ranger – stealthily etching their movements onto copper plates. Wordless physical action, choreography and spectacular cinematography create a dreamlike logic. The title REDOUBT can refer to both a provisional military fortification, and a defensive, isolated psychological position – both evoked by the film’s setting in a vast Idaho wilderness. “Mr. Barney’s most engrossing film in over a decade… speaks directly to contemporary American themes: the place of the gun, the fate of the environment and the fantasies and paranoias of those who turn their back on constitutional government and American society” (Jason Farago, The New York Times). Note: no animals were harmed in the making of the film.

Matthew Barney’s show, Embrasure, is currently on exhibition through December 21 at Gladstone 64 (130 E. 64^th Street, NYC).

Presented with support from the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation Fund.

USA    2019    134 MINS.    GRASSHOPPER FILM

Reviews

“Breathtakingly beautiful… Matthew Barney’s film is a western that reaches for the cosmic.”
– The New York Times

“A visual equivalent of a tone poem. The visual narrative of REDOUBT has a graceful fluidity, enhanced by an aurally mesmerizing score by Jonathan Bepler, Barney’s long-time collaborator… recalls the laconic, enigmatic dreaminess of Terrence Malick. Barney’s work is a synthesis of creative intelligences, his and his collaborators.”
– Clayton Press, Forbes

“The least strenuous and most beautiful film Barney has made.”
– Sebastian Smee, The Washington Post

“Barney paints a cinematic picture of the American West, trading his familiar baroque visuals for the straightforward sublimity of the landscape and the ineffable strangeness of its inhabitants.”
– Catherine Taft, Artforum