Redoubt (Matthew Barney, 2019)

Matthew Barney | 2019 | USA | 134’ | no dialogue

Inspired by the myth from Ovid’s Metamorphoses about Diana, the goddess of the hunt, and Actaeon, the hunter who is punished after accidentally intruding upon her, Matthew Barney’s Redoubt unfolds as a series of hunts over seven days and nights in Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains.

Diana (played by champion Palma rifle shooter Anette Wachter) appears as a modern-day sharpshooter, accompanied by her attendants—the Tracking Virgin and the Calling Virgin—in pursuit of an elusive wolf. Stumbling across the trio, the Engraver (played by Barney) furtively documents their actions in a series of copperplate engravings. Their movements gradually take on the form of a choreographed dance, echoing, foreshadowing and interpreting their encounters with the wilderness. In a pivotal scene near the film’s end, a Native American dancer, the Hoop Dancer, performs an intricate movement sequence that links the characters across time and space, triggering a climactic moment of cosmic and terrestrial reversal.

Layering classical, cosmological, and American myths of nature and guardianship, Redoubt constructs a layered portrait of the central Idaho region—ultimately questioning humanity’s place in the natural world. The film has been described by The New York Times as “breathtakingly beautiful” - “as you emerge you will discover that you have found a new way of seeing”.
 

Artist’s Bio 

Matthew Barney (b. 1967, San Francisco) is among the most ambitious and provocative artists of our time, known for epic projects such as Drawing Restraint (1987-ongoing), The CREMASTER Cycle (1994–2002) and River of Fundament (2007-2014). His work examines physical and biological systems as a portal to the psychic, symbolic, mythological, occult and archetypal dimensions of human experience and consciousness. Describing himself primarily as a sculptor, his practice spans drawing, photography, performance and film.