Metacritic Film

Matthew Barney: No Restraint

Starring Matthew Barney, Björk, Barbara Gladstone, Jacques Herzog, and Richard Flood

MPAA RATING: Not Rated

IFC First Take
Documentary
70 minutes | Color
USA
Released In Theaters December 20, 2006

How does artist Matthew Barney use 45,000 pounds of petroleum jelly, a factory whaling vessel and traditional Japanese rituals to create his latest art project? Barney plowed the waters off the coast of Nagasaki to film his massive endeavor, Drawing Restraint 9. The documentary Matthew Barney: No Restraint journeys to Japan with Barney and his collaborator Bjork, as the visual artist creates a "narrative sculpture" telling a fantastical love story of two characters that transform from land mammals into whales. (IFC First Take)

WRITTEN BY
Alison Chernick

DIRECTED BY
Alison Chernick

Overall Metascore

This is a weighted, normalized average of all individual scores given by critics, on a scale of 0 (worst) to 100 (best).

59 / 100

Critic Reviews

100	Seattle Post-Intelligencer Regina Hackett Maybe because I happen to be reading "Moby Dick" and was therefore more open to the wider world of whale metaphor, I found Chernick's view of Barney and his working entourage riveting.
75	TV Guide Chernick may not answer every question about this beguiling and enigmatic film, but you wouldn't want it to: Mystery is an essential part of the Barney experience.
70	Variety Leslie Felperin Whatever audiences might have wanted to know about sculptor-filmmaker Matthew Barney but were too embarrassed to ask is revealed in accessible documentary Matthew Barney: No Restraint.
67	The Onion (A.V. Club) No Restraint misses a lot of opportunities, like the chance to contrast Barney's work with artists working on a lower budget, or to examine his positive and negative influence on modern art, or to break down an economic model based on selling off the pieces Barney discards along the way.
60	The Hollywood Reporter While not as balanced or fully satisfying as it should be, Matthew Barney: No Restraint will fit naturally as a pairing for future theatrical and DVD exposures of Barney's controversial works.
60	Village Voice Michelle Orange Chernick's film traces the creation of Barney's "narrative sculpture" with open curiosity and an alert, amiable eye.
50	The New York Times Alison Chernick's film skims the surface of a strange and celebrated career. After a meager 72 minutes, the man who once stretched an obsession with testicles into a five-film cycle remains as unknowable as ever.
50	New York Post Pleasant enough, with funny moments.
38	Boston Globe Ken Johnson As blandly lucid as Barney's is wildly and perplexingly imaginative.

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