Reflection: Matthew Barney ‘Redoubt’

Matthew Barney's 'Redoubt' is a film exploring the myth of Diana as the protector of the forest, within the context of the reintroduction of wolves in the Idaho mountains. Barney explores this through a film that primarily focuses on body language and movement as its main method of communication, with the sound design and score accentuating this.

The narrative of this piece merges with the process of creation. There is a strong sense of animism in the film, with the natural landscape, animals and objects becoming imbued with a sort of spiritual feeling. The hunters, bringing forth ideas of Diana and her hunters, bend and swoop, rope dance down trees, flip, crawl, trudge, and glide through the landscape, seemingly mirroring their environment. From the stills above, you can see that Barney carefully chooses his shots to be both aesthetically pleasing and those which amplify the rich symbolism and storytelling he seeks to explore.

The film has a unique element, of exploring something 'local' like this wolf problem, but Barney ties it into larger themes such as environmentalism, and this myth of Diana which adds this air of distance to the film. Indigenous people's arts and creations are also explored in the film, and the movements in traditional dances echo throughout this film with the animals and hunters. In the clip below, you can see a woman preparing and practising hoop dancing. The forms she creates in her dance mirror that of the soaring birds we see later in the clip, an intentional parallel as these are the images the dance seeks to evoke.

In terms of my own practice, I am going to take the ideas about movement, the landscape and the subtle exploration of mythology from this film into my own work. At the moment, I am struggling with not being so literal with my interpretation of the themes of climate change, and the emotions of it all. I just need to keep refining my work so that it can achieve what I want it to, and I think by studying Barney's filmography I can hopefully develop my approach.