The Wake

There are a lot of questions and distractions when two lovers star in a movie together. Interest in the actual plot is often discarded, replaced instead by an insatiable curiosity over whether the leads can communicate their private chemistry to public audiences, and whether these tensions will float the ship—or sink it.

Matthew Barney, the writer and director of Drawing Restraint 9, probably meant to inspire deeper interpretations amongst his audience than just a display of romance with his longtime off-screen partner Björk. The man responsible for the sprawling, nightmarishly surreal Cremaster Cycle film series never did have a flair for Hollywood frivolity.

Still, the pair’s attraction is obvious, giving viewers the feeling they’ve stumbled upon a broadcasted courting ritual. The film itself is exactly how you would picture copulation between Barney and Björk to be—totally bizarre, mildly terrifying, admittedly erotic and narrated by the construction and collapse of a large-scale sculpture of petroleum jelly.

Barney became fascinated with the aforementioned tower of lubricant while devising the script. The figure’s process of molding, solidifying and eventually drifting apart in glacial fashion serves as one of the film’s primary metaphors for the changes we experience as our lives entangle with others. Unfortunately, divulging the second metaphor would ruin the paralyzing awe of Drawing Restraint 9’s conclusion, so I’ll digress.

The story (yes, there is one…sort of) takes place upon the Nisshin Maru, a Japanese whaling vessel. Playing the film’s Occidental Guests, Barney and Björk board separately and are taken to their respective chambers to be elaborately groomed. He gets his Brawny Man beard shaved (and later loses most of his hair and both eyebrows to a drunk crewmember, in a welcome moment of hilarity), while she gets naked in a bathtub filled with oranges.

Both are then outfitted in massive fur kimonos and bizarre headdresses, and brought to a tiny tea room for a Shinto-like marriage ceremony conducted by an elder Japanese man. The process takes about two hours, and the only snippet of dialogue is the ceremony leader’s explanation of the ship’s history.

Once the ritual concludes, a vicious storm rocks the Nisshin Maru and the Guests are left alone in the flooding tea room to succumb to their sexual desires, which, among other things, involves cutting away at each other’s limbs. Yes, it’s gratuitous—but the act is also necessary to represent the duo’s animalistic progression.

Overall, Barney’s film is as gently meticulous as his union with Björk: attempting to stress both the perfection and frustration in their delicacy. By contrasting the order and obedience of marriage with the forbidden pleasures of sex, he also proves that once the safety of our structures are removed, the unpredictability of emotions will always hold sway.

Take that, Brangelina.