River Of Fundament (2014)

River Of Fundament is Matthew Barney's sprawling avant-garde epic. It's a five-hour ritualistic odyssey loosely inspired by Norman Mailer's "Ancient Evenings." It blends performance art, opera, and dense mythological imagery. The result is closer to a fever dream than a conventional film. Maggie Gyllenhaal turns up amid the chaos. She lends her name to a production far outside typical Hollywood territory. The site carries one scene from this challenging work. It captures a rare nude scene from an actress better known for grounded dramatic roles. Here, she pushes into cinema's experimental fringe.