Presence

The description of a new film, Drawing Restraint 9, caught my eye:

The core idea of Drawing Restraint 9 is the relationship between self-imposed resistance and creativity...

I'm not sure I've ever formulated this idea in writing, but I've long felt that there is a strong relation between restriction and creativity. The imposition of boundaries on the creative instinct acts as a catalyst for creative activity, rather than stifling it. Rather than unbridled and uncontrolled creativity that can often be destructive, the imposing framework of rules helps to channel and direct the creativity, enhancing the meaning in the process. There's any number of examples of this: Shabbos, haiku, rock and roll, Brisker hakiras; I could give hundreds of examples.

So I was quite interested to see this idea expressed in the film's description. Unfortunately, things went downhill from there. The description continues:

...a theme it symbolically tracks through the construction and transformation of a vast sculpture of liquid Vaseline, called “The Field”, which is molded, poured, bisected and reformed on the deck of the ship over the course of the film.

Ohhhh-kay...Waiter, check please! You can watch the trailer if you like, the words that came most readily to mind were "Bjorkian nightmare" (afterwards, I noticed Bjork in fact stars in the film). It's pretty wacky; perhaps we need to put a few more strictures on her creativity.