Aronofsky's Black Swan (2010)

[DavidSeven]

Though the bar sequence certainly fits Kunis' character's arc, it's very awkwardly handled and probably should've been reconceived entirely.

I thought this sequence was actually pretty incredible. Perhaps the best executed sequence in the film outside of the finale.

[B-side]

I thought this sequence was actually pretty incredible. Perhaps the best executed sequence in the film outside of the finale.

You are a strange person, David. Very strange indeed.

[DavidSeven]

You are a strange person, David. Very strange indeed.

I'd be surprised if others didn't agree, but I can see how it wouldn't be in everyone's taste.

[B-side]

I'd be surprised if others didn't agree, but I can see how it wouldn't be in everyone's taste.

I guess I'm just really sick of the whole cliche of the bad influence always offering our innocent protagonist drugs. That combined with the awful dance scene just left a bitter taste in my mouth.

[DavidSeven]

I guess I'm just really sick of the whole cliche of the bad influence always offering our innocent protagonist drugs. That combined with the awful dance scene just left a bitter taste in my mouth.

Yeah, I agree it's conceptually cliche, but I think Aronofsky unsurprisingly conveys drug induced haze better than most others.

[B-side]

Yeah, I agree it's conceptually cliche, but I think Aronofsky unsurprisingly conveys drug induced haze better than most others.

Eh. It's not a deal breaker or anything, and it definitely fits Kunis' character's arc, but like I said, maybe I'm just bitter to it. I've seen it a dozen times. Kinda reeks of an after school special.

[Fezzik]

Didn't like the film. Here are some disjointed thoughts.

- Strange that there's not much of a reality base to compare with Nina's insanity. This world is wonky from the get-go! And it really isn't very fun to live in the shoes of a supremely paranoid person for a whole film. Aronofsky gives the already off-balance protagonist a high-pressure situation and the fantasy does not deepen - it repeats itself.

I wouldn't call it fun, either, but it certainly was effective. The madness was innate - it wasn't just Nina, it was how the film was filmed, too. Darkness, shadows, little visual tricks that allow the audience to feel a bit paranoid too.

I loved that about the film. It really brings us into Nina's madness to the point that by the time of her transformation, its no longer a surprise or jarring, its simply the next step of her descent and we accept it like its almost normal.

After she transforms into the swan on stage, we switch to the POV of the audience and see that, well, yeah, of course she's not really a swan, but her shadow cast on the back wall of the stage still shows her having wings.

Breathtaking.

[DavidSeven]

Spoiler tag that third paragraph, Fezzik. Just in case.

[NickGlass]

I thought this sequence was actually pretty incredible. Perhaps the best executed sequence in the film outside of the finale.

I don't know if I would stress my enjoyment of the drug segment of this sequence, but I think Portman's performance pre-E cocktail, while she's attempting to socialize (essentially just a conversation with Kunis, then the two fratboys at the bar), is exceptionally convincing and insightful.

[Dillard]

I wouldn't call it fun, either, but it certainly was effective. The madness was innate - it wasn't just Nina, it was how the film was filmed, too. Darkness, shadows, little visual tricks that allow the audience to feel a bit paranoid too.

I loved that about the film. It really brings us into Nina's madness to the point that by the time of her transformation, its no longer a surprise or jarring, its simply the next step of her descent and we accept it like its almost normal.
Well, right. I admit it's for the most part captivating, although in a gut-wrenching, painful sort of way. But as I added at the end of my post, for me the spectacle doesn't add up to much. I'm rooting for Nina to pull out that dark side of her throughout the course of the film, only because of the oppressive experience of living with this fragile, frigid white-swan side to Lily. The campy element and Mila Kunis (when Lily's whole rival, double obsession isn't being projected onto her) are the only things that make the film bearable.

I don't much like living in Aronofsky's world. His conception of male-ordered sexuality and paranoia as significant parts of the artistic process obstruct me from participating fully in any of the potentially transcendent moments. This is not Nina's transformation; it's prescribed for her by Thomas, Aronofsky's own doppelganger in the film. Of course, for Nina's stage audience, the product of the artist's transformation is Grand Guignol. But I'm not cheering the spectacle even at that point; I'm cheering for the change in mood, the release of tension. This isn't transcendence, Nina being bullied into a murderous, animalistic place within herself; it's coercion. Aronofsky lives in an ugly world. Check please.

ps. The best dance scene in the movie was the opening one, hands down. It summed up the entire film rather nicely in one bite.

[Pop Trash]

Aronofsky lives in an ugly world. Check please.


Err, couldn't you say the same thing about Bunuel, Hitchcock, Polanski, DePalma, Lynch, Cronenberg, etc. etc.

[Dillard]

Err, couldn't you say the same thing about Bunuel, Hitchcock, Polanski, DePalma, Lynch, Cronenberg, etc. etc.Probably. As I reread my posts and try to make sense of my reaction, I think I'm not able to achieve the necessary emotional distance from the action and characters to enjoy any of it. Aronofsky certainly doesn't help me with the way he shoots the film, so close to his characters so often. And the story is clear where it's headed from the beginning; it's just a matter of enduring the scenes of Lily's madness while waiting for the spectacle to reach its climax. Aronofsky doesn't invite his viewers into the film the way my favorite film directors/storytellers do; he grabs them by the balls and drags them into his world.

[Dillard]

Breathtaking.
Those moments where the viewer is given the space and time to breath are few and far between.

[DavidSeven]

Aronofsky doesn't invite his viewers into the film the way my favorite film directors/storytellers do; he grabs them by the balls and drags them into his world.

If a filmmaker has the skill to do the latter, then more power to him. I think many of the most appreciated directors on this forum do precisely that. I don't see it as a negative.

[DavidSeven]

Those moments where the viewer is given the space and time to breath are few and far between.

You know, if I didn't already know you disliked the movie, I'd swear it was profoundly effective for you.

[Dillard]

You know, if I didn't already know you disliked the movie, I'd swear it was profoundly effective for you.
I guess you could say that the movie affected me, but not positively.

[B-side]

I don't much like living in Aronofsky's world. His conception of male-ordered sexuality and paranoia as significant parts of the artistic process obstruct me from participating fully in any of the potentially transcendent moments. This is not Nina's transformation; it's prescribed for her by Thomas, Aronofsky's own doppelganger in the film. Of course, for Nina's stage audience, the product of the artist's transformation is Grand Guignol. But I'm not cheering the spectacle even at that point; I'm cheering for the change in mood, the release of tension. This isn't transcendence, Nina being bullied into a murderous, animalistic place within herself; it's coercion.

I don't understand how any of this speaks ill of the film.

[DavidSeven]

I guess you could say that the movie affected me, but not positively.

Well, it seems like it affected you, but not pleasantly -- sort of in the Spielberg-ian sense. I don't know that most people are expecting or hoping for that in this film.

[Dillard]

I don't understand how any of this speaks ill of the film.I'm not really responding as a critic. I haven't said the film is bad. I've just said that I didn't enjoy the experience of it, and have no interest of entering into that particular film world again.

[B-side]

I'm not really responding as a critic. I haven't said the film is bad. I've just said that I didn't enjoy the experience of it, and have no interest of entering into that particular film world again.

Hm. Fair enough.

[Dillard]

Well, it seems like it affected you, but not pleasantly -- sort of in the Spielberg-ian sense. I don't know that most people are expecting or hoping for that in this film.What are people hoping for from this film?

[DavidSeven]

I presume what they hope for in any film -- a meaningful experience of any sort, whether it be conventionally pleasurable or not.

[Melville]

What are people hoping for from this film?
Personally, I was hoping for a harrowing, oppressively subjective descent into madness, with an emphasis on physicality and overwhelming emotion. Which is what I got, my disappointments aside (I'd rate it higher than Brightside did). Basically, this: "Aronofsky doesn't invite his viewers into the film...; he grabs them by the balls and drags them into his world."

[Dillard]

Personally, I was hoping for a harrowing, oppressively subjective descent into madness, with an emphasis on physicality and overwhelming emotion. Which is what I got, my disappointments aside (I'd rate it higher than Brightside did). Basically, this: "Aronofsky doesn't invite his viewers into the film...; he grabs them by the balls and drags them into his world."Haha, you know, I guess with my personal emotional demons, I'm just not well-suited for this kind of film, period. What you were hoping for, that just doesn't sound like something I need to subject myself to.

[B-side]

Personally, I was hoping for a harrowing, oppressively subjective descent into madness, with an emphasis on physicality and overwhelming emotion. Which is what I got, my disappointments aside (I'd rate it higher than Brightside did). Basically, this: "Aronofsky doesn't invite his viewers into the film...; he grabs them by the balls and drags them into his world."

It may have been too De Palma-esque for my liking. Definitely campy stuff. It's fitting, I suppose, and I'm not sure it really could've been done in a manner that wasn't at least a bit campy, but I'm not one for camp, and, really, I've never been all that big on horror either.

[Dillard]

It may have been too De Palma-esque for my liking. Definitely campy stuff. It's fitting, I suppose, and I'm not sure it really could've been done in a manner that wasn't at least a bit campy, but I'm not one for camp, and, really, I've never been all that big on horror either.Camp is great, when it's funny or amusing or enjoyable.

[Melville]

Haha, you know, I guess with my personal emotional demons, I'm just not well-suited for this kind of film, period. What you were hoping for, that just doesn't sound like something I need to subject myself to.
Yeah, that's understandable. My personal demons attract me to films like this. I like films that project my worst feelings onto the screen.

[B-side]

Camp is great, when it's funny or amusing or enjoyable.

I'd say the camp here is amusing, if not eye-roll-worthy.

[B-side]

Yeah, that's understandable. My personal demons attract me to films like this. I like films that project my worst feelings onto the screen.

Heh. Same here.:P

[Dillard]

Yeah, that's understandable. My personal demons attract me to films like this. I like films that project my worst feelings onto the screen.What do you guys like about films like that?

[B-side]

What do you guys like about films like that?

I'm not sure, really. Maybe it's as simple as knowing someone else has at least a vague idea of what you're going through.

[Dillard]

I guess if I were to offer a bit of criticism, which perhaps I started doing the most in my opening post, I find my perspective best expressed by a paragraph from Jeff Reichert's review (http://www.reverseshot.com/article/black_swan) for Reverse Shot:

Once Nina (Portman has finally been cast in the role her perfect beauty and limited range has been waiting for) has won the role, her mental state decays rapidly. You’ll lose count of how many times Leroy breaks rehearsal to campily holler some variation on, “I know you can dance the white swan, Nina, but can you dance zee black swan?� at the besieged girl, reiterating the film’s only real theme. In case we weren’t quite following, the addition of the looser, more sexual Lily (Mila Kunis, literally tattooed with black swan wings on her back—doh!) to the troupe, and Leroy’s nearly immediate elevation of her to be Nina’s understudy, helps push the girl to the brink, as she’s unable to decide if she wants to fight or fuck her doppelgänger and competitor. A fragile talented young woman stunted into self-loathing and paranoid narcissistic hallucination by an overprotective, nutso mother; girls who, when they aren’t cat-fighting or self-mutilating, engage in one-off lesbo action (the end result of Lily and Nina’s drug and alcohol-infused night on the town, though Aronofsky pulls his punches, suggesting their liaison might all have been in Nina’s head); and literal stabs at masturbation—these all sound like the obvious side effects of several forty-year-old men banding together to write a screenplay about the female psyche.

Aronofsky and his screenwriters don't really end up having much to say about the way human psychology, especially female psychology, works. And what they do say is pretty simplistic and at times ridiculous.

[Pop Trash]

The Reverse Shot argument that these are wild fantasies of middle aged male directors doesn't hold much water with me because, again, you could make that same argument against many of the lauded "masterpieces" by Lynch, Polanski, Hitchcock, DePalma, Bunuel, Bergman, so on and so forth.

[Dillard]

The Reverse Shot argument that these are wild fantasies of middle aged male directors doesn't hold much water with me because, again, you could make that same argument against many of the lauded "masterpieces" by Lynch, Polanski, Hitchcock, DePalma, Bunuel, Bergman, so on and so forth.And people do. But while we're talking about the film, why don't we talk about the film and what works and doesn't work in it?

[Henry Gale]

Yeah, I agree it's conceptually cliche, but I think Aronofsky unsurprisingly conveys drug induced haze better than most others.

Add to that the way he subliminally cuts in images of the monster swan and Nina's mother. I wasn't sure if I was just imagining them when I saw it, but that featurette on the sound design confirmed it.
I thought it was very eerie and effective, especially considering how on a surface level it seems like so many other club/rave scenes like it these days. Also, I think you can see it as the point in which Nina starts to lose track of what's real in that night, with too many "dark" aspects to her mind being crammed into the energy of the club around her, forcing her to confront them, but instead giving her one of her first strong delusions.

[Ezee E]

Reverse Shot seems like they wanted a totally different movie.

[Dillard]

Reverse Shot seems like they wanted a totally different movie.Reichert's description seems fairly accurate to me.

[eternity]

This is easily my least favorite Aronofsky film. Some of the individual aspects worked really well; Cassel is perfect and some individual scenes are pretty damn good. But the whole thing was unsatisfying and painfully familiar, almost reminding me of a mediocre horror movie at time. Certainly didn't have any more to it than a mediocre horror film.

But most people seem to love it, and since there is a lot to like here, I'm going to say that there might be something I missed. It just didn't come together for me.

[[ETM]]

If anyone's keen to see the film, and it's not playing in cinemas near you, a decent screener copy is available from the usual disreputable sources.

[Melville]

What do you guys like about films like that?
For me, the primary reasons are understanding and catharsis. The main thing I hope to get out of art is edification: through art, I want to increase my understanding of human experience. And the experiences that have had the largest effect on me, both in immediate intensity and long-term impact, have invariably been extremely bad ones, so I'm drawn to art that tries to explore those types of experiences. I don't think Black Swan does a very good job of exploring the whole system of causes and effects surrounding the protagonist's horrible experiences, essentially reducing that system to rather simplistic and cliched psychological notions, but it brilliantly captures the immediate, raw experience itself, the emotions and modes of engagement with the world moment by moment. And I find that kind of exploration at least as edifying.

The second reason is the catharsis afforded by making the feelings concrete. Maybe catharsis isn't the right word—it's more of a stabilizing effect, allowing one to ground oneself in an understanding of one's worst feelings, rather than being cast adrift in them.

[Dillard]

For me, the primary reasons are understanding and catharsis. The main thing I hope to get out of art is edification: through art, I want to increase my understanding of human experience. And the experiences that have had the largest effect on me, both in immediate intensity and long-term impact, have invariably been extremely bad ones, so I'm drawn to art that tries to explore those types of experiences. I don't think Black Swan does a very good job of exploring the whole system of causes and effects surrounding the protagonist's horrible experiences, essentially reducing that system to rather simplistic and cliched psychological notions, but it brilliantly captures the immediate, raw experience itself, the emotions and modes of engagement with the world moment by moment. And I find that kind of exploration at least as edifying.

The second reason is the catharsis afforded by making the feelings concrete. Maybe catharsis isn't the right word—it's more of a stabilizing effect, allowing one to ground oneself in an understanding of one's worst feelings, rather than being cast adrift in them.I think agree with almost everything you say here. And it is that visceral experience that strikes a little too close to home for me. Did you get thr stabilizing, grounding effect from Black Swan that allows for greater understanding of self? I certainly didn't.

[Melville]

I think agree with almost everything you say here. And it is that visceral experience that strikes a little too close to home for me. Did you get thr stabilizing, grounding effect from Black Swan that allows for greater understanding of self? I certainly didn't.
Perhaps I miscommunicated. It's not a grounding effect that allows for greater understanding; it's the greater understanding that allows for the grounding. Generally, the less stable the film, the more unhinged, explosively emotional, and direct and forceful it is, the more truthful I find it to be in its evocation of experience (though that obviously depends on what kind of experience it's trying to evoke). And even if watching it is deeply unpleasant, saddening, depressing, or what have you, it's kind of a concretizing, controlled environment that allows some distance from the evoked experiences, and in the end, I feel I've gained a better understanding of the experience that's being evoked, which helps me feel grounded in my daily life. Something that hits closer to home, like Requiem for a Dream (to keep the discussion Aronofsky-related) works better for me in that sense, but Black Swan accomplished it as well.

[Qrazy]

The second reason is the catharsis afforded by making the feelings concrete. Maybe catharsis isn't the right word—it's more of a stabilizing effect, allowing one to ground oneself in an understanding of one's worst feelings, rather than being cast adrift in them.

I haven't seen this film but for me this kind of thing is a double edged sword. This catharsis may be afforded but perhaps there's also an element of comfort involved in the experience of the depressing content itself. That is to say that depression is the kind of thing which feeds on itself. Experiencing certain forms of unhappiness can be nearly addictive at times. It's interesting though because in the case of art there can be simultaneously an immediate emotional reaction and a distancing effect. That is to say that one can engage in the depressing content on one level but be removed from it on another given that the film is fiction (or at least deals with others outside of oneself). Perhaps the mind of the viewer is to some extent indulging in the depressing content precisely because of the depressing experience that content affords... as odd as that may seem. Anyway I think that is one possibility that may also be occurring amongst the others you've already noted.

[Dillard]

Perhaps I miscommunicated. It's not a grounding effect that allows for greater understanding; it's the greater understanding that allows for the grounding. Generally, the less stable the film, the more unhinged, explosively emotional, and direct and forceful it is, the more truthful I find it to be in its evocation of experience (though that obviously depends on what kind of experience it's trying to evoke). And even if watching it is deeply unpleasant, saddening, depressing, or what have you, it's kind of a concretizing, controlled environment that allows some distance from the evoked experiences, and in the end, I feel I've gained a better understanding of the experience that's being evoked, which helps me feel grounded in my daily life. Something that hits closer to home, like Requiem for a Dream (to keep the discussion Aronofsky-related) works better for me in that sense, but Black Swan accomplished it as well. With what you're describing, it sounds like you're able to achieve the adequate amount of space needed from Aronofsky's film worlds to be self-reflective. I think to a great extent Aronofsky's style actively works against the viewer achieving this space.

[Dillard]

I haven't seen this film but for me this kind of thing is a double edged sword. This catharsis may be afforded but perhaps there's also an element of comfort involved in the experience of the depressing content itself. That is to say that depression is the kind of thing which feeds on itself. Experiencing certain forms of unhappiness can be nearly addictive at times. It's interesting though because in the case of art there can be simultaneously an immediate emotional reaction and a distancing effect. That is to say that one can engage in the depressing content on one level but be removed from it on another given that the film is fiction (or at least deals with others outside of oneself). Perhaps the mind of the viewer is to some extent indulging in the depressing content precisely because of the depressing experience that content affords... as odd as that may seem. Anyway I think that is one possibility that may also be occurring amongst the others you've already noted.What you're saying here, this sort of masturbation in the depths, is exactly what I experienced when I saw Requiem For A Dream with a good friend of mine in high school. This was a time in my life when the only type of conversation worth having was the "deep" conversation, and when films, music, books, etc. that reveled in heightened Feeling (ala Melville "the more unhinged, explosively emotional, and direct and forceful) were the soup du jour. After we saw Requiem, we went to an 24-hour Perkins and hashed all our troubles and feelings out until dawn.

I realize I'm painting a somewhat silly picture of what Qrazy is describing. However, his point is well taken: is greater understanding achieved when the film merely transports one to this place where one revels in the depths? This is also not what you're describing though Melville, as you imply that you gain enough separation from the material.

[Spinal]

Eh, I don't know. It was pretty cool in places. But I found myself largely uninvested and I'm trying to figure out just why. It seems like a great idea in theory, but the writing was kind of shallow. I felt like I was always two steps ahead of the film, rather than vice versa. Gonna give it some time to sink in.

[Spinal]

Surprise of this movie was that Mila Kunis gives the best performance. Go figure.

[Russ]

Ms. Hershey was pretty good too.

[Watashi]

The script for this is really keeping me from loving it. It's pretty terrible.

[Spinal]

The script for this is really keeping me from loving it. It's pretty terrible.

Yeah, I think I agree with you. The set-up is great. But, boy, some of the dialogue is painful, especially from the ballet director.

And I was kind of disappointed ...

... that it was all in her head. I mean, that's a pretty timid choice right there. Killed the stakes for me.

During the finale, I couldn't help but think about how it compared unfavorably with Repo! The Genetic Opera. That film's last scene had guts that this one lacked, flawed though it was. Despite the title, this film is ironically more like the white swan than the black swan, too timid, unable to truly let loose, emotionally frigid.

[Spinal]

Time to think about this film is not doing it any favors.

I mean ...

She danced the night of her life with a hunk of glass in her belly? What?

I guess I'm supposed to just ignore that and accept it as metaphor. But that's part of the film's problem. The film doesn't commit fully to its own fantastical elements. And on the flip side, the film's 'real world' is shallow and unconvincing.

[eternity]

I give the film credit for its ability to perceived in many different ways. Too bad none of the possible interpretations are even remotely fulfilling.

Time is not being kind to this one.

[Ivan Drago]

I fucking loved this film.

[Boner M]

You're an easy grader, Spinal.

[Spinal]

You're an easy grader, Spinal.

Yeah, I'm focusing on the negative because I had really high expectations. I will say that I thought Portman was great. Her dancing was very impressive. The drugged/drunk scene was exciting.

As was ...

The shocking leg-transformation.

I just wish the writers hadn't explained so much of it away and diluted its power.

[Pop Trash]

I don't think the screenplay is that good either, but that just makes me admire Aronofsky the filmmaker that much more. I mean the dialogue may as well be people grunting at each other since it's the overwhelming emotion of the film that gets me.

[Spinal]

I had zero emotional connection to it. None. Even when I admired it.

[Pop Trash]

I had zero emotional connection to it. None. Even when I admired it.
Well different strokes I guess...

I admit during the first half I was a bit detached from it, but once it got going, and especially during the final dance, I was sucked into it to the point where my normal critical facilities crumbled away and I was entranced by it all.

[Raiders]

I had zero emotional connection to it. None. Even when I admired it.

Welcome to me circa Inception's release.

[[ETM]]

Welcome to me circa Inception's release.

Get a room, you two.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Welcome to me circa Inception's release.

*points at nose*

[Spinal]

Stop trying to bait me into more Inception discussions, Match Cut. I'm not doing it.

[ledfloyd]

Time to think about this film is not doing it any favors.
yeah. the more i think about it the less i'm able to convince myself the script is anything but awful.

i really liked it up until about the halfway point. the bar scene was the turning point for me. and then the symbolism and over reliance on ineffective horror tropes in the second half bothered me. the finale is still pretty affecting. but i think that has more to do with the visuals and music than anything else.

it's still good, but it could've been great. and worth seeing just because aronofsky's ambition is impressive even if the films he makes are consistently flawed.

[DavidSeven]

I mean ...

She danced the night of her life with a hunk of glass in her belly? What?

I guess I'm supposed to just ignore that and accept it as metaphor. But that's part of the film's problem. The film doesn't commit fully to its own fantastical elements. And on the flip side, the film's 'real world' is shallow and unconvincing.

I'm sure it could never happen in real life, but this doesn't seem like that big of a leap for a movie to make. I don't see why a combination of adrenaline/insanity/sheer will wouldn't make this entirely plausible. And that goes with what the film is conveying about her at that point, too.

[Spinal]

OK, here's another question that I have that speaks to the film's confused used of metaphor ...

Does she actually turn into a swan or not? The film seems to say, no, since we see a shot of her with actual arms after we see her with wings. It is suggested that this it just her internal battle that we are seeing.

But then, why does her mother notice the marks on her back that signal the beginning of her transformation? Are we supposed to think that those are really something else?

[Pop Trash]

I think it's implied that she used to be a "cutter" which goes with her repressed, OCD, neurotic personality. So her mother thinks she is scratching herself or being scratched by some other object. Of course, this also goes with the duality of the metamorphosis (to swan or not to swan).

[Spinal]

Ah, yes. That makes sense.

[eternity]

OK, here's another question that I have that speaks to the film's confused used of metaphor ...

Does she actually turn into a swan or not? The film seems to say, no, since we see a shot of her with actual arms after we see her with wings. It is suggested that this it just her internal battle that we are seeing.

But then, why does her mother notice the marks on her back that signal the beginning of her transformation? Are we supposed to think that those are really something else?
It's clarified more than once that she scratches her shoulders when stressed. Her mom asks, "Are you scratching yourself again? Show me your back!" during that really tense scene during the beginning. Then in one scene where none of the trippy hallucinating is going on, Nina is furiously scratching her shoulder but the camera is facing her front and no attention is really called to it.

[Spinal]

Yes, you're right. I remember that.

[Idioteque Stalker]

I'm not sure about the movie as a whole quite yet, but Aranofsky directed the dog tits out of this. The ballet scenes were so dynamic and fluid in close up; the best few seconds of the film for me was when the witch makes its first stage appearance behind Portman's shoulder. Incredibly ominous.

[DavidSeven]

I love the part where

she walks toward the black witch/swan/monster (?) and there's this comedic sound effect as she realizes it's just a guy in a suit. Just seemed like a perfectly timed release of tension during that breathless finale.

[Spinal]

I think the main issue I have with the film still remains ...

I don't understand, in a film like this, why you need to tell us that the transformation isn't actually happening. It's a film. Why not just have it be a strange, inexplicable reality? That's what Kafka did. Right? That's what's Lynch would do, right? They wouldn't reassure us that it's all in her head. When she has an illicit night with the other dancer and it doesn't really happen, it takes the wind out of the tension and emotion that is building. When her legs dramatically transform and it's all better in the morning, that kills the film's momentum as well. Etc, etc.

This is what I mean when I say the film is too timid.

[Barty]

After a second viewing this might just be my #1 of the year.

[endingcredits]

I think the main issue I have with the film still remains ...

I don't understand, in a film like this, why you need to tell us that the transformation isn't actually happening. It's a film. Why not just have it be a strange, inexplicable reality? That's what Kafka did. Right? That's what's Lynch would do, right? They wouldn't reassure us that it's all in her head. When she has an illicit night with the other dancer and it doesn't really happen, it takes the wind out of the tension and emotion that is building. When her legs dramatically transform and it's all better in the morning, that kills the film's momentum as well. Etc, etc.

This is what I mean when I say the film is too timid.

I agree. I also wished he would have just let it go out (preferably completely control) without telling us,

"You're witnessing a manifestation of her insanity as she undergoes her transformation into a swan".

Also, the horror flashes and the overt symbolism could have been ditched outright or at least toned down. Especially the horror flashes, which seemed to impede build up of tension and momentum.

[Raiders]

Is it possible to come out of this film without much to say about it? That's where I am. I guess I agree in large part with Spinal on how the film seems to not convincingly use its obvious, on-the-nose metaphor. Aronofsky films the crap out of some of the scenes, and I dig his intensity and occasionally claustrophobic imagery, but I kind of saw it all coming and never felt terribly invested into much of it. Aronofsky's camera seemed desperately and aggressively chasing some great emotional center and truth that kept eluding him same as it did his central character.

[Melville]

Delayed responses...


I haven't seen this film but for me this kind of thing is a double edged sword. This catharsis may be afforded but perhaps there's also an element of comfort involved in the experience of the depressing content itself. That is to say that depression is the kind of thing which feeds on itself. Experiencing certain forms of unhappiness can be nearly addictive at times. It's interesting though because in the case of art there can be simultaneously an immediate emotional reaction and a distancing effect. That is to say that one can engage in the depressing content on one level but be removed from it on another given that the film is fiction (or at least deals with others outside of oneself). Perhaps the mind of the viewer is to some extent indulging in the depressing content precisely because of the depressing experience that content affords... as odd as that may seem. Anyway I think that is one possibility that may also be occurring amongst the others you've already noted.
I think this is true. Extreme states of being can be compelling just by virtue of seeming more real by being more intense, even miserable states of being and ones that you might largely fear desperately and try to escape from. But experiencing such things via art doesn't necessarily run counter to what I described. Certainly there is the possibility of simply wallowing in it, but there is also emotional and existential truth to be found in such experiences, and viewing them and having them evoked through art can allow you to explore those truths.

There's also the simple matter of being drawn to something you relate to.


What you're saying here, this sort of masturbation in the depths, is exactly what I experienced when I saw Requiem For A Dream with a good friend of mine in high school. This was a time in my life when the only type of conversation worth having was the "deep" conversation, and when films, music, books, etc. that reveled in heightened Feeling (ala Melville "the more unhinged, explosively emotional, and direct and forceful) were the soup du jour. After we saw Requiem, we went to an 24-hour Perkins and hashed all our troubles and feelings out until dawn.

I realize I'm painting a somewhat silly picture of what Qrazy is describing. However, his point is well taken: is greater understanding achieved when the film merely transports one to this place where one revels in the depths? This is also not what you're describing though Melville, as you imply that you gain enough separation from the material.
I'm not sure your 24-hour Perkins thing necessarily differs from what I was describing. And generally, the less separation from the material, the more effective it is. Some separation is necessary, of course, in order to even meaningfully view the art, but ideally that separation is made infinitesimal.

[balmakboor]

I'm squarely in the loved it camp.

[Biff Justice]

I loved the raw emotional intensity of this film, but I thought thematically it was rather muddled. What exactly was I supposed to take out of this?

Was becoming the Black Swan supposed to be a positive or negative in the end? Is the writer saying that to acheive artisitic perfection you have to decend into madness? Sacrifice youself?

While I did enjoy the film overall, and thought Natalie Portman may have given her best performance, yet, the writing was a serious blemish on the film.

[Spinal]

Wow, I can't believe how much of the film they are revealing in the TV ads. Such a shame.

[balmakboor]

Was becoming the Black Swan supposed to be a positive or negative in the end? Is the writer saying that to acheive artisitic perfection you have to decend into madness? Sacrifice youself?

I don't think this really needed spoiler tags, but, anyway, I think the writer thought of her tranformation in negative terms because she is shown vomiting toward the end. Vomiting is actually a trope used in stories to symbolize the nature of a hero's transformation. She will either throw up during the stage where she is resisting the journey (the transformation will be a good thing and resisting is unhealthy). A good recent example is Precious. Or she will throw up after the transformation to symbolize the unhealthiness of the change itself. I'm Still Here and Black Swan are good examples of such a negative transformation story.

I think that Black Swan is part of a long tradition of movies where a director takes a thin, skeletal, schematic script and directs the hell out of it. It's not my favorite sort of thing, but it worked here given the black/white psychology of the piece. Francis Coppola has made quite a few of these with that ultimate love it and hate it movie -- for me anyway -- One From the Heart leading the pack.

[Pop Trash]

Is that Joseph Campbell balmak?

[balmakboor]

Is that Joseph Campbell balmak?

It all kinda started with him. I've read a lot of different Campbell influenced things over the years. Done some extrapolating of my own.

[Sxottlan]

Thanks to travel on my time off and work, I haven't been able to see this yet.

But I'm seeing it tomorrow. I can't wait!

[Sxottlan]

This was excellent! Just my kind of movie.

[Bosco B Thug]

I'll repeat two critics' comparisons for this movie that strike me as apt (and I won't name their names, because it just so happens they're the two I seem to mention a lot): as Aronofsky's The Company (Altman), and The Piano Teacher.

Correspondingly, Black Swan goes down two avenues: the lofty, vaguely meta artist's statement that kneels in awe at the adult land of professional dance, and a stone-faced study of cloistered, socially inflexible neurotics. It smooshes them together hopelessly and Aronofsky and his writers get terribly confused in the process.


I loved the raw emotional intensity of this film, but I thought thematically it was rather muddled. What exactly was I supposed to take out of this?

Was becoming the Black Swan supposed to be a positive or negative in the end? Is the writer saying that to acheive artisitic perfection you have to decend into madness? Sacrifice youself? I agree, and I was hoping to hear supporters' takes on the same question. Artistic perfection as sexual realization, in particular, has two sides to it. Lily is both threat and means toward release.

Which is why it's so odd that the film chooses to castrate Nina again pretty much immediately after the sex scene, dashing the fantasy of the two dancers as lovers yet wringing out their role as rivals, which has much less to do with either release/perfection or her castration via mother.

If madness/violence is required for Nina to achieve sexual/artistic fulfillment, the film falls way short of The Piano Teacher. If her sexual/artistic peak is supposed to be some long-deserved triumph by this incredibly fragile, repressed girl, why is the finale so filled with fear and anxiety, and not enough with the erogenous empowerment, no matter how many times Walter Chaw points out her stab wound-as-vaginal opening?

I'm a sycophant, I know, but everyone should read Chaw's review. It has awesomely confusing and confusingly awesome insights in equal measure, and I'll admit the film is pretty fascinating.

[Chac Mool]

I think the main issue I have with the film still remains ...

I don't understand, in a film like this, why you need to tell us that the transformation isn't actually happening. It's a film. Why not just have it be a strange, inexplicable reality? That's what Kafka did. Right? That's what's Lynch would do, right? They wouldn't reassure us that it's all in her head. When she has an illicit night with the other dancer and it doesn't really happen, it takes the wind out of the tension and emotion that is building. When her legs dramatically transform and it's all better in the morning, that kills the film's momentum as well. Etc, etc.

This is what I mean when I say the film is too timid.

I would say "seemingly timid". Since Portman is in every scene, the entire film is seen from her own, increasingly deranged perspective. What's real, and what isn't?

Did Beth stab herself, or did Nina stab her (possibly implied by the nail file in her hand in the elevator)? Did she hurt her mother? Was her mother at the show, or did she imagine her?

The film is a focused and (in its own way) realistic look at Nina's psychological unraveling, with occasional psychotic crises (terrifying, violent) eventually turning into a generalized loss of contact with reality. By the end, even Nina realizes that she no longer knows what is real; at that point, she latches onto her single greatest emotion -- her desire to succeed -- and gives it her all.

Letting the film slide into a strange, inexplicable reality would have made it more ambiguous and, for some, more shocking/cool, but it would have dulled its focus on the real, raw, psychological deterioration of Nina.

I, for one, loved the film (what direction! what a performance by Portman!) for how it remained intensely grounded, the crazy moments interpretable as mere hallucinations of a shattering mind.

[Chac Mool]

Screw formalities and proper insights: I love the fucking hell out of this movie. I simply feel sorry for anyone who didn't catch that underneath the film's hysteria, melodrama, horror, anxiety, humor and surrealism is a special brand of awesomeness we rarely get in the movies. Everything I love about Polanski, Hitchcock, De Palma, Cronenberg and Showgirls can be found in this crazy-freakout hybrid of a nutso movie. As I felt with Inglourious Bastards, Inland Empire, I'm Not There, Femme Fatale and There Will Be Blood, it isn't often I find myself so enraptured by the level of exuberant invention on display.

Strong contender for film of the year.

Going through the comments on this thread, and I have to say that you kind of nailed it -- "Black Swan" does have the same kind of awesome/crazy/what-will-happen-next feel as "Inglorious Basterds", "I'm Not There", "Femme Fatale" and "There Will Be Blood". It's something new, something out of the ordinary. Cinema that shakes you.

I haven't seen "Inland Empire", but now that you've placed it in such company, I'm going to have to chase it down.

Also: Portman obviously centers the film, but I think Wynona Ryder deserves a shout-out for her very sharp, very bitter perf as Beth. Casting known actors in bit roles can backfire, but it works wonderfully well here.

[Spinal]

I, for one, loved the film (what direction! what a performance by Portman!) for how it remained intensely grounded, the crazy moments interpretable as mere hallucinations of a shattering mind.

Interpretable? The film comes right out and tells you. There's no interpretation necessary. There's very little to think about or ponder after the film is over.

[balmakboor]

I rewatched The Tales of Hoffmann the other night. I'd say Black Swan owes as much to that as The Red Shoes.

I also agree that Winona Ryder was great.

[Chac Mool]

Interpretable? The film comes right out and tells you. There's no interpretation necessary. There's very little to think about or ponder after the film is over.

Disagree. Not every crazy moment is necessarily a hallucination, and thematically, there is a lot to think about or ponder after the film is over. :)

[megladon8]

Probably going to see this tonight in Times Square.

Looking forward to it. Will report back, of course!

[Yxklyx]

Unfortunately, the gf is averse to seeing this - is this a guy movie?

[Ezee E]

Unfortunately, the gf is averse to seeing this - is this a guy movie?
Ballerinas and dancing dude. Avoid at all costs!

[megladon8]

This was pretty great.

It really caught me off guard with what it was really "about". I went in expecting a horror film about obsession, but came out having seen a Kafka-esque nightmare about beauty, self-image, and the strive for perfection.

Aronofsky's potent images make the script's metaphors intoxicating, and once again Clint Mansell provides an infectious score.

I was impressed by how well Aronofsky communicated the film's central themes of the skewed self image, and the search for perfection being intrinsically linked with self-destruction and pain.

Very good. Aronofsky scores again.

[Bosco B Thug]

a Kafka-esque nightmare about... self-image This is actually a pretty great way to view it. Brings a sense of sensitivity to a film that I think lacks that. Still think the film is fundamentally confused.


I was impressed by how well Aronofsky communicated the film's central themes of the skewed self image, and the search for perfection being intrinsically linked with self-destruction and pain. For instance, the search for perfection brings self-destruction and pain, but it's also linked to the positive aspects of maturation and liberation.

Does the film ever successfully feel for her as a victim? It depicts and depicts and manifests her anxieties, but it never really feels like it's on her side. Does it ever really convey that the tragedy is not in the perfection, but in that violence and fear and humiliation is the only way she seems to be able to free her pent up insecurity? Because it certainly makes every effort to darken and not to celebrate any of her bids towards liberation. Right now, freakin' Drag Me To Hell seems like the more sympathetic portrait of a little girl in an adult world.

[megladon8]

I think the film did see her as a victim, yes, but I'm also not sure that her being a victim of these events and psychoses was an active part of the film's agenda.

The mother is clearly shown as being overbearing and emotionally abusive in a rather typical "parent living out their dreams through their children" situation.

And all of the events in the film show her being a victim of her own confusion and mental disarray. Her murdering Beth (the veteran ballerina played by Winona Ryder) was not portrayed as a malicious act, but as yet another instance of her "killing herself", as she watches this twisted version of "her" stab itself in the face with the nail file.

Similarly, her "sexual awakening" with Mila Kunis was shown to have been a product of her being drugged, rather than her acting out or being irresponsible.

[Bosco B Thug]

The mother is clearly shown as being overbearing and emotionally abusive in a rather typical "parent living out their dreams through their children" situation. True. More needed to be done with her, though. Like, I don't feel like she was connected enough to Nina's self-image as a dancer. And if Cassel serves as the demagogue in her professional life, he's not villainized enough in the way the mother is.

I can understand the film not wanting to be black and white with Cassel, dual mentor & abuser, and same with Kunis's Lily, too, but this just also goes to speak to the film's confused nature for me.

I love Walter Chaw's notion of Kunis "[turning] out in the end to be no less the nemesis for being kind of a nice girl," but I just didn't get that from the film.


Similarly, her "sexual awakening" with Mila Kunis was shown to have been a product of her being drugged, rather than her acting out or being irresponsible. Which was a toootal bummer (in more ways than one :) ).

[megladon8]

I thought it quite obvious that Kunis was, in Portman's delusions, her "Black Swan".

She was the darker, evil version of herself - sexually liberated, a more passionate and sensual dancer, etc.

Near the beginning of the film, when Cassel recites the story of "Swan Lake" to the dance company as they warm up and practice, that story is pretty much exactly what happens in the love triangle of Portman, Kunis and Cassel, with Cassel playing the dual role of the sorcerer and the prince.

Cassel places the "spell" on Portman (the virginal, innocent, fearful white swan), causing her to obsess so deeply over the role of the Swan Queen that she becomes it.

He also offers her salvation in success. In perfection of self.

Kunis comes in - the black swan - and Portman sees Kunis as herself, but untethered and fearless (which Aronofsky portrays quite matter-of-factly by having several instances of Portman thinking she sees herself, but it is in fact Kunis). She is a threat and a rival for Cassel's affections, the same way that the black swan in the ballet seduced the prince, stealing his eye from the white swan.

And it is only in the finality of killing herself (quite literally) that Portman is able to let go and finally lose herself in the role, the same way that the white swan in the story could only free itself by throwing itself off the cliff.


It's quite a brilliant, multi-layered fable.

[Bosco B Thug]

I thought it quite obvious that Kunis was, in Portman's delusions, her "Black Swan".

She was the darker, evil version of herself - sexually liberated, a more passionate and sensual dancer, etc.

Near the beginning of the film, when Cassel recites the story of "Swan Lake" to the dance company as they warm up and practice, that story is pretty much exactly what happens in the love triangle of Portman, Kunis and Cassel, with Cassel playing the dual role of the sorcerer and the prince.

Cassel places the "spell" on Portman (the virginal, innocent, fearful white swan), causing her to obsess so deeply over the role of the Swan Queen that she becomes it.

He also offers her salvation in success. In perfection of self.

Kunis comes in - the black swan - and Portman sees Kunis as herself, but untethered and fearless (which Aronofsky portrays quite matter-of-factly by having several instances of Portman thinking she sees herself, but it is in fact Kunis). She is a threat and a rival for Cassel's affections, the same way that the black swan in the ballet seduced the prince, stealing his eye from the white swan.

And it is only in the finality of killing herself (quite literally) that Portman is able to let go and finally lose herself in the role, the same way that the white swan in the story could only free itself by throwing itself off the cliff.


It's quite a brilliant, multi-layered fable. Yeah... but the love/rivalry triangle is hardly there, and I feel like the fable superimposed onto reality hardly comments on the reality and the reality of these people.

It's too much in Portman's head. I can appreciate what the film does, but it also fails to do a lot that would've made a more sensitive, deeper film.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Saw this last night. I don't think the film saw Nina as a victim at all. Well, only of an overbearing and repressive mother, and a victim of her own obsession with perfection. Were Cassel and Kunis a bit slimey? Sure, but their actions were never detrimental to Nina unless it was of Nina's own accord. I never saw either as villainous.

I liked the film, but didn't love it, as I hoped I would. It was an interesting portrait of obsession, and how obsession directly leads to repression and self-destruction. Honestly though, I was hoping for more. Anything it had to say on those subjects wasn't interesting enough. It touched on the harmful potential parenting can have on children, but it didn't go deep enough for me. Also, her psychological breakdown was certainly compelling, but some moments worked far better than others. In fact, a few moments came off as... well, pretty silly, to be honest.

Still, it was a good film, an absorbing experience while it was happening. I just wish it had a bit more lasting power. I'm not feeling much even the next morning.

[megladon8]

I love that throbbing, pulsing three-note theme Mansell used several times throughout the film.

It's featured in the soundtrack track "Lose Yourself"...

cNrOvW6XuNo

[chrisnu]

Saw this last night. I don't think the film saw Nina as a victim at all. Well, only of an overbearing and repressive mother, and a victim of her own obsession with perfection. Were Cassel and Kunis a bit slimey? Sure, but their actions were never detrimental to Nina unless it was of Nina's own accord. I never saw either as villainous.
I felt the same about Cassel and Kunis. Also, about the film seeing Nina as a victim: given that the film is filtered entirely through Nina's perception, I'm not so sure how much Nina is actually a victim of her overbearing mother, and how much Nina believes that she is such a victim, and her perception of her mother in the film reflects that. I'll have to see the film again to assess how productive thinking about Nina's relationship with her mother in that way will be.

[Kurosawa Fan]

I felt the same about Cassel and Kunis. Also, about the film seeing Nina as a victim: given that the film is filtered entirely through Nina's perception, I'm not so sure how much Nina is actually a victim of her overbearing mother, and how much Nina believes that she is such a victim, and her perception of her mother in the film reflects that. I'll have to see the film again to assess how productive thinking about Nina's relationship with her mother in that way will be.

Well, while some of her mother's behavior could be explained away as Nina's delusions, you'd have to go pretty far with that line of thinking to assume that Nina is fabricating the entire overbearing nature of the relationship. For instance, the multitude of portraits of Nina, made by her mother. Those were present before the breakdown. I think it's made fairly clear that the mother has created this obsession and drive for perfection in her daughter, especially with conversations about how her career was ended by Nina (even though she admits it was her choice) and by her fears that Nina will make the same mistake, which leads to Nina's sheltered existence and repression of her sexuality.

[DavidSeven]

If her sexual/artistic peak is supposed to be some long-deserved triumph by this incredibly fragile, repressed girl, why is the finale so filled with fear and anxiety, and not enough with the erogenous empowerment

What more needs to be seen to show erogenous empowerment than her laying one on Cassel as she triumphantly walks off the stage after a perfect number? An emotionally powerful moment coinciding with both her artistic peak and a sexual power transition between her and Cassel. Yeah, her fear and anxiety is unrelenting until the curtain call, but that seems like the natural progression of things in the performance world.

I'm not sure the film necessarily has anything positive or negative to say about Nina's journey. It sort of is what it is -- an allegory for becoming engulfed in creating and perfecting art. It's a film about expressing emotionality more than anything else. Aronofsky successfully conveys the torment of being on the brink and beyond in pursuit of artistic dominance and the overwhelming gratification of reaching that peak. The positives and negatives to be gleaned from that are on the viewer.

[Bosco B Thug]

What more needs to be seen to show erogenous empowerment than her laying one on Cassel as she triumphantly walks off the stage after a perfect number? An emotionally powerful moment coinciding with both her artistic peak and a sexual power transition between her and Cassel. Yeah, her fear and anxiety is unrelenting until the curtain call, but that seems like the natural progression of things in the performance world. Yeah, I recall that; eh, still doesn't do it for me. And the fact is, she reaches this peak only due to what she does in the dressing room to "Lily," only reaching this liberation in this darkest, most divergent of ways.


I'm not sure the film necessarily has anything positive or negative to say about Nina's journey. It sort of is what it is -- an allegory for becoming engulfed in creating and perfecting art. It's a film about expressing emotionality more than anything else. Aronofsky successfully conveys the torment of being on the brink and beyond in pursuit of artistic dominance and the overwhelming gratification of reaching that peak. The positives and negatives to be gleaned from that are on the viewer. Yeah, I understand this position. Although my position remains that I think it's a real problem the film doesn't speak about this outwardly, or even much implicitly, as I see it.

[megladon8]

While I do think the film portrayed Nina as a victim, I agree with DavidSeven in that I am not sure how much it really matters.

The story is of obsession, and the quest for perfection of self and of artistic vision. Whether or not Nina is a victim is kind of inconsequential.

[Chac Mool]

I don't think Nina is a victim so much as a clearly damaged person, emotionally and sexually repressed, obsessed by perfection. It's not that Cassel and Kunis' characters abuse her -- it's that their actions and the pressure of her leading role push her down a very destructive path.

[Mr. Pink]

I think the detractors pretty much nailed it, so I can't really add much that hasn't already been said.

Ultimately it felt like The Wrestler part 2, with the coolness factor of wrestling replaced by the no-so-very-cool subject of dancing (I think I heard somewhere it was supposed to be thematically linked, but still).

Didn't care for it very much, aside from it being well-made.

[Ezee E]

I really see no connection.

[Mr. Pink]

I really see no connection.

Person sacrifices their well being for the sake of the art and dies at the end because of it.

Really, the only difference between this and The Wrestler were the psychological bits.

[Ezee E]

Did "The Hammer" really sacrifice anything though? That was really his last and only resort in the end.

[Mr. Pink]

All wrestlers sacrifice their bodies to some extent for their profession/art, intentionally or not. Nobody forced him to continue wrestling.

[Ezee E]

All wrestlers sacrifice their bodies to some extent for their profession/art, intentionally or not. Nobody forced him to continue wrestling.
Or did they?

After his attempts to get his daughter back, as well as get a girlfriend, but failed. He went back to the only thing that did love him, which were his fans. Everything else for him had gone to shit.

[Mr. Pink]

No, I hear you, but he still died because of his art.

[Ezee E]

In a very different way then in Black Swan though.

[Mr. Pink]

In a very different way then in Black Swan though.

Nah, not really. It's only different 'cause Portman was insane. But someone told me Aranofsky was continuing the themes from The Wrestler in Black Swan purposefully after I mentioned how similar they were, so apparently it was intentional.

[Ezee E]

Nah, not really. It's only different 'cause Portman was insane. But someone told me Aranofsky was continuing the themes from The Wrestler in Black Swan purposefully after I mentioned how similar they were, so apparently it was intentional.
Figured he'd mention something like that when I was at his interview in Telluride. Didn't make any connection really. question wasn't brought up either. He did mention about family dysfunction crossing over in all his films.

[DavidSeven]

Aronofsky's been doing variations of this theme for his entire career. Just replace art/wrestling with some other obsession (a numeric patter, heroine, or a cure/eternal life). The key is in the execution. Black Swan is very differently made than The Wrestler. Black Swan is in the vein of early Polanski while The Wrestler has a more free-wheeling aesthetic. The latter almost feels like it's almost solely concerned with capturing Rourke's performance and all else be damned. Black Swan is far more concerned with the cinematic atmosphere surrounding the performances. Don't think it's fair to say one is completely derivative of the other beyond their themes.

[megladon8]

So while I definitely think Aronofsky's comment towards Armond White was done in poor taste and with terrible timing, Armond White's continuing rudeness throughout his stint as MC at the NYC Film Critics Circle Awards last night just cemented even further how much of a shit-disturbing asshole White is.

Read about it here. (http://insidemovies.ew.com/2011/01/11/armond-white-darren-aronofsky-nyfcc-awards/)

[Mr. Pink]

Aronofsky's been doing variations of this theme for his entire career. Just replace art/wrestling with some other obsession (a numeric patter, heroine, or a cure/eternal life). The key is in the execution. Black Swan is very differently made than The Wrestler. Black Swan is in the vein of early Polanski while The Wrestler has a more free-wheeling aesthetic. The latter almost feels like it's almost solely concerned with capturing Rourke's performance and all else be damned. Black Swan is far more concerned with the cinematic atmosphere surrounding the performances. Don't think it's fair to say one is completely derivative of the other beyond their themes.

Right. I'm not necessarily arguing they are similar beyond their themes, but Black Swan and The Wrestler are pretty easily the most similar in comparison to any of his other movies.

In any case, I couldn't get over how much it resembled The Wrestler . . .

. . .up to and including the ending.

[baby doll]

I, for one, loved the film (what direction!)More like: What direction? It's like Aronofsky just said to his cameraman, let's film everything in close-up (with the odd extreme long shot of the rehearsal area), and from as many angles as possible, and hope that it comes together in the editing room.

Incidentally, in defense of Armond White, he was dead-on when he said that Kanye West did a better job of directing a ballet sequence.

[megladon8]

Nah. Aronofsky's direction was pretty great here. The opening ballet sequence was stunning and set the ominous tone of the rest of the film very well.

And I loved the voyeuristic approach as the camera follows Nina around, as if someone (or something) is quite literally breathing down her neck the whole time.

Very well directed.

[baby doll]

Nah. Aronofsky's direction was pretty great here. The opening ballet sequence was stunning and set the ominous tone of the rest of the film very well.

And I loved the voyeuristic approach as the camera follows Nina around, as if someone (or something) is quite literally breathing down her neck the whole time.

Very well directed.I dunno, dude, when a director films a ballerina from the waist-up, it doesn't exactly inspire confidence in me. I just get the feeling he didn't expect anybody watching the movie to be very interested in ballet. (Or did Portman simply not have the chops?) As for the camera breathing down her neck, you should really see Rosetta.

[megladon8]

I dunno, dude, when a director films a ballerina from the waist-up, it doesn't exactly inspire confidence in me. I just get the feeling he didn't expect anybody watching the movie to be very interested in ballet. (Or did Portman simply not have the chops?) As for the camera breathing down her neck, you should really see Rosetta.


While the movie is about ballet, the movie isn't really about ballet.

The mood evoked in that opening sequence is much more important than the actual ballet.

It could have been a hockey game. Or a gunfight. Or someone brushing their teeth. The act itself was secondary to what this sequence was portraying, which was the beginning of Nina's obsession, and of the Black Swan (both literal and metaphorical) fighting for her sanity and her life.

[baby doll]

While the movie is about ballet, the movie isn't really about ballet.

The mood evoked in that opening sequence is much more important than the actual ballet.

It could have been a hockey game. Or a gunfight. Or someone brushing their teeth. The act itself was secondary to what this sequence was portraying, which was the beginning of Nina's obsession, and of the Black Swan (both literal and metaphorical) fighting for her sanity and her life.Here's the way I look at it: If somebody's not that interested in ballet, they probably shouldn't be directing a movie that, on its most basic literal level, is about a ballet company. It's an odd fit, to say the least.

To begin with, the choice of Swan Lake is way too obviously a metaphor for the heroine's sexual hang-ups (white equals virgin and black equals whore? Wow, slow down a minute, Mr. Bergman, so I can process this complicated symbolism). I guess that's true also of The Red Shoes in The Red Shoes, but at least Powell and Pressburger didn't rely so completely on shopworn stereotypes for their grasp of how a ballet company works. Also, Powell knew a few things about how to film ballet. I might've been okay with the twirling handheld camera movements in the opening sequence had that not remained Aronofsky's default mode for the entire film. Get a bit of variety in there, for cryin' out loud. It's as if he didn't think the movie was quite Jewish enough, so he decided to have the camera assume the point of view of a dreidel.

[soitgoes...]

Here's the way I look at it: If somebody's not that interested in ballet, they probably shouldn't be directing a movie that, on its most basic literal level, is about a ballet company. It's an odd fit, to say the least.

To begin with, the choice of Swan Lake is way too obviously a metaphor for the heroine's sexual hang-ups (white equals virgin and black equals whore? Wow, slow down a minute, Mr. Bergman, so I can process this complicated symbolism). I guess that's true also of The Red Shoes in The Red Shoes, but at least Powell and Pressburger didn't rely so completely on shopworn stereotypes for their grasp of how a ballet company works. Also, Powell knew a few things about how to film ballet. I might've been okay with the twirling handheld camera movements in the opening sequence had that not remained Aronofsky's default mode for the entire film. Get a bit of variety in there, for cryin' out loud. It's as if he didn't think the movie was quite Jewish enough, so he decided to have the camera assume the point of view of a dreidel.Really?

[B-side]

Really?

You've been baby doll'dâ„¢.

[soitgoes...]

You've been baby doll'dâ„¢.
It's happened before.

[B-side]

It's happened before.

But has it been trademarked? That's the question.

[elixir]

Here's the way I look at it: If somebody's not that interested in ballet, they probably shouldn't be directing a movie that, on its most basic literal level, is about a ballet company. It's an odd fit, to say the least.

To begin with, the choice of Swan Lake is way too obviously a metaphor for the heroine's sexual hang-ups (white equals virgin and black equals whore? Wow, slow down a minute, Mr. Bergman, so I can process this complicated symbolism). I guess that's true also of The Red Shoes in The Red Shoes, but at least Powell and Pressburger didn't rely so completely on shopworn stereotypes for their grasp of how a ballet company works. Also, Powell knew a few things about how to film ballet. I might've been okay with the twirling handheld camera movements in the opening sequence had that not remained Aronofsky's default mode for the entire film. Get a bit of variety in there, for cryin' out loud. It's as if he didn't think the movie was quite Jewish enough, so he decided to have the camera assume the point of view of a dreidel.

The Red Shoes is a better movie. I agree with that.

But as a counterpoint, the movie never makes it out to be a brilliant or subtle device, in regards to the symbolism. In fact, I forget the exactly wording, but Cassel's character states at the beginning of the film that "Swan Lake is an obvious choice. This is obvious. But we will try to do something different." So, yes, it is completely obvious and even on-the-nose, but I suppose whether or not it works depends on if your perceive it to be "different" enough.

Again, The Red Shoes' ballet sequences are quite breathtaking to me, and while Black Swan didn't achieve those levels, I never had a problem with the filming of them--I actually thought it was quite strong. Perhaps it's because I know very little about ballet, but I found many of the shots striking.

[baby doll]

Really?Okay, that's probably not the actual reason for the spinning camera movements, but seriously, why all the spinning? (Actually, I know why: Ballet is boring, so let's jazz it up with lots of pointless stylistic choices.)

[Ezee E]

Okay, that's probably not the actual reason for the spinning camera movements, but seriously, why all the spinning? (Actually, I know why: Ballet is boring, so let's jazz it up with lots of pointless stylistic choices.)
You'll always baffle me.

[baby doll]

The Red Shoes is a better movie. I agree with that.

But as a counterpoint, the movie never makes it out to be a brilliant or subtle device, in regards to the symbolism. In fact, I forget the exactly wording, but Cassel's character states at the beginning of the film that "Swan Lake is an obvious choice. This is obvious. But we will try to do something different." So, yes, it is completely obvious and even on-the-nose, but I suppose whether or not it works depends on if your perceive it to be "different" enough.

Again, The Red Shoes' ballet sequences are quite breathtaking to me, and while Black Swan didn't achieve those levels, I never had a problem with the filming of them--I actually thought it was quite strong. Perhaps it's because I know very little about ballet, but I found many of the shots striking.Well, let's not take Cassell as a stand-in for Aronofsky. When he's says that Swan Lake is obvious, I took that to mean that everybody does Swan Lake; it's been done to death. My point is that there's no reason why the ballet within the film needs to be a giant obvious metaphor for the heroine's state of mind, which makes the whole film feel rather programmatic. Actually, what's striking about the film is how easily, on the one hand, it succumbs to high-level interpretative readings (it basically does the work for you in that department: Portman white, Kunis black), while on a simple denotative level, the unreliable narration makes it difficult to know how much is real and how much is a dream.

[megladon8]

Yeah, between this and the conversation a few days back in the True Grit thread, I'm really thinking that baby doll sees what he wants, when it suits him.

[Raiders]

Er, with the exception of the dreidel bit, I more-or-less agree with baby doll here.

[megladon8]

It gets a little frustrating when baby doll can read 10000 different layers of meaning in a shot of someone brushing their teeth in a Godard or Tarkovsky film, but something like the ending of True Grit that has an obvious deeper meaning behind the surface events, he refuses to accept.

[baby doll]

It gets a little frustrating when baby doll can read 10000 different layers of meaning in a shot of someone brushing their teeth in a Godard or Tarkovsky film, but something like the ending of True Grit that has an obvious deeper meaning behind the surface events, he refuses to accept.Didn't I just say that Black Swan easily succumbs to interpretative readings? On the other hand, when have I ever on this forum looked for any sort of deeper meaning behind the surface events of any film by Godard or Tarkovsky? (The scene in Stalker where the guy brushes his teeth is just about him brushing his teeth while his wife bitches him out.) You can obviously go there if you want to, and certain later films by Godard almost demand that you do (Notre musique, for instance, has a three-part structure modeled after The Divine Comedy), but that's not what interests me about either filmmaker. I like their movies for dumb, shallow reasons, like their style.

[elixir]

When you say "succumb," do you mean it negatively (since that word has a negative connotation)? Or do you consider this a positive thing? Or neither.

Also, your stated reasons for liking a film are not dumb or shallow!

[baby doll]

When you say "succumb," do you mean it negatively (since that word has a negative connotation)? Or do you consider this a positive thing? Or neither.

Also, your stated reasons for liking a film are not dumb or shallow!In the case of Black Swan, I suppose I mean it negatively because it's so programmatic and obvious (i.e., Portman is the white swan, and Kunis is her evil twin, so Aronofsky has the former wear white and latter wear black).

[elixir]

In the case of Black Swan, I suppose I mean it negatively because it's so programmatic and obvious (i.e., Portman is the white swan, and Kunis is her evil twin, so Aronofsky has the former wear white and latter wear black).


I very much agree that many times it's WAYYYYYY too on-the-nose. I still liked it though, despite its flaws.

[BuffaloWilder]

In the case of Black Swan, I suppose I mean it negatively because it's so programmatic and obvious (i.e., Portman is the white swan, and Kunis is her evil twin, so Aronofsky has the former wear white and latter wear black).


See, I don't believe that the black/white dichotomy is as simple-minded as that - although, this could be because I don't especially see Kunis as her evil twin. Because, y'know - she isn't.

[baby doll]

See, I don't believe that the black/white dichotomy is as simple-minded as that - although, this could be because I don't especially see Kunis as her evil twin. Because, y'know - she isn't.I dunno, Aronofsky really hammers on the idea that she's supposed to be Portman's doppelgänger.

But for the sake of argument, let's say you're right. Does that make the story any less clichéd and ridiculous?

[Ezee E]

But that's what the movie is about.

[BuffaloWilder]

I dunno, Aronofsky really hammers on the idea that she's supposed to be Portman's doppelgänger.

But for the sake of argument, let's say you're right. Does that make the story any less clichéd and ridiculous?


She's seems like a doppelganger initially, sure - but, I think the idea is supposed to be less that she's the black-scale version of Portman's character than that she is simply Portman's character without all of the neurosis, and the personal restrictions. She has the mastery over the purely emotional aspects of her dancing that Portman could never reach. But, she doesn't really do anything in the film that could be construed as - well, bad. As the film goes on, the less and less mysterious she seemed, to me - outside of the machinations that Portman's mind were playing on her; she just seems like every other woman her age, even offering kind words of kudo after Portman had told her to shove off, late in the film.

And, in point of fact, if that alone was the kind of dynamic that Aronofsky was ostensibly going for, then he probably should've went to greater lengths to have Portman's character not -

- y'know, murder her. And hide her in a closet. In her mind.



But for the sake of argument, let's say you're right. Does that make the story any less clichéd and ridiculous?

I don't see why that matters, one way or the other - I was talking only about your conjecture on the film's use of black and white. But, for the sake of argument - well, I didn't think it was all that clichéd to begin with. Ridiculous, maybe - just a little bit. But, I think that's also kind of the point.

[DavidSeven]

In the case of Black Swan, I suppose I mean it negatively because it's so programmatic and obvious (i.e., Portman is the white swan, and Kunis is her evil twin, so Aronofsky has the former wear white and latter wear black).

Oh geez. The black/white stuff are plot points. It's only "obvious" because, you know, it's the freakin' plot. There's nothing more to it than that. People need to stop acting like they're interpreting something when they bring it up.

[baby doll]

Oh geez. The black/white stuff are plot points. It's only "obvious" because, you know, it's the freakin' plot. There's nothing more to it than that. People need to stop acting like they're interpreting something when they bring it up.As in The Red Shoes, the film really underlines the parallels between the story of Swan Lake and the plot of the film, which as I've argued, feels rather schematic and predictable.

[Boner M]

Fairly effective portrait of pushing oneself to the brink vs. a very tired portrait of self-destruction as the key to creation. The latter thesis is one that never really registers with any force, since it's one that Aronofsky has seemingly gleaned from the films he's borrowing from, and so much of the film is tailored to fit the theme; there's never as strong a sense of lived-in experience as needed.

Final performance is pretty great, though.

[Boner M]

Also, poor Winona Ryder.

[Sycophant]

Not really gonna try to join the conversation here (especially since it's been baby doll'd, complete with his recent obsession with Jewishness), but I thought I'd pop in to say that unlike The Fighter, which I saw right before this, this one is sticking to my ribs. Pretty sure I loved it, and it may be one of the best 2010 films I've seen (it wasn't that exciting a year (as I've seen it), TBH). Portman was amazing, as was Kunis. Probably my favorite Aronofsky film to date.

[megladon8]

Wow, Syco, it's awesome to see you so enthusiastic about this one!!

Both Jen and I loved it, as well. I was surprised at Jen's love for it, too, as I was really getting the feeling she wasn't digging it too much while we were in the theatre.

[DavidSeven]

Not really gonna try to join the conversation here (especially since it's been baby doll'd, complete with his recent obsession with Jewishness), but I thought I'd pop in to say that unlike The Fighter, which I saw right before this, this one is sticking to my ribs. Pretty sure I loved it, and it may be one of the best 2010 films I've seen (it wasn't that exciting a year (as I've seen it), TBH). Portman was amazing, as was Kunis. Probably my favorite Aronofsky film to date.

Right on.

[Watashi]

The more I think about this movie, the less I like it. :|

[megladon8]

The more I think about this movie, the less I like it. :|


Contrarian.

[Ezee E]

Been wanting to rewatch it for months now. Since it's going to be icecold on Tuesday, I think that might be ideal.

[Dukefrukem]

There's some great camera work here. Aronofsky's movies typically always do have interesting ways to shoot scenes. I like how they CGIed out the cameras in the mirrors while able to do a 360 shot around the dancers.

[chrisnu]

pk7eFeRUsMo

[eternity]

pk7eFeRUsMo
Bill Hader does Cassel perfectly.

[Milky Joe]

Biggest laugh for me was the brief shot of Kristen Wiig.

[baby doll]

Over at the Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/video/2011/feb/15/black-swan-oscar-video), one of their reviewers makes the case that Black Swan should win the Oscar:


To give this film an Academy Award would make up for all the Oscars Russ Meyer never received.

Now personally, I think he's being terribly, terribly unfair to Russ Meyer, who (a) knew that his films were comedies, and (b) was a better director than Darren Aronofsky, and certainly he knew more about editing (along with Jean-Luc Godard, he's the last great montage filmmaker of the 20th century). And while Natalie Portman is a fine young actress, she can't hold a candle to the likes of Erica Gavin, Haji, Lorna Maitland, Kitten Natividad, Tura Satana, and Edy Williams for reasons that should be abundantly clear to anyone with eyes in their head.

[Derek]

for reasons that should be abundantly clear to anyone with eyes in their head.

What was that you were saying about being more dogmatic? ;)

[Spaceman Spiff]

Bill Hader does Cassel perfectly.

Are you kidding me? It was a terrible impression. He was doing a Spanish accent for much of it.

Funny skit though. And yes, Wiig steals it.

[baby doll]

Les Vampires (Feuillade, 1915) ****
You're alright, Derek. You're alright.

[Ivan Drago]

Accidentally posted this in the Bickering thread first, heh.

Anyone else stay through the credits and notice that the five main characters were also credited as the roles they would have in Swan Lake itself? Beth McIntyre was also The Dying Swan, Thomas was The Gentleman, etc. Thought that was cool. Haunting music, as well.

[Bosco B Thug]

Hmm, I don't know what made me more responsive this time to its neuroses-soaked mental portrait and glamorous, quasi-refined spectacle, but, now knowing its outcome, maybe it's my perceiving it less this time as a feature-length attack and morally-confused rigmarole on its basket case protagonist. Instead, I'm tempted to give Aronofsky full benefit of the doubt that all of the mental torture Nina is put through is in effort to portray a triumph or breakthrough from the image issues caused by image impositions from all sides. She's not sexualizing for the jerkish company director, not further infantalizing for her mother, and not "loosening up" for Lily (all of whom trick her, abuse her, or try to change her) - she is just accepting, and owning, her complete and utter innocence and guilelessness, and reaching perfection in the most pure way: by a complete, but merely mental, inhabiting of the role. There's a number of things that nudge me into believing Aronofsky is totally aware his story is a rather "inconsequential" tale of a girl who needs to learn how to play "mean," and so concocts an over-the-top drama to achieve it - things such as the ironic prevalence of the jaunty operatic motifs over Nina's most hysterical moments; the fact that Cassel, Kunis, and Hershey are revealed to be complete puppy dogs getting the rough end of Nina's crazy stick (every one of them gets a moment in the finale to fawn goofily and go googly-eyed over Nina), yet they are the goons who need sex and drugs and motherhood while Nina's the only true ascetic artistic being; and of course, and I'm eating shoe here, the pure, ridiculous concoction of Nina's reality is utterly cheeky (the most ridiculous being Lily having sex with Leroy, then Leroy turning into the bird creature) - tons of the film is pure fantasy, and this lends to it the idea the film can only be astonished at Nina's "unheralded vision."

I guess this is what everyone (here and everywhere) has been saying, so you all win. Sort of. I'm sure there's still something morally iffy about it all, and other flaws remain of course.

Oh, and I'm going to call bluff on criticisms that it shows no interest in ballet. Aronofsky does a lot to make ballet beautiful and committed and exciting. It's no where near The Red Shoes, but his heart is in the right place, and what makes "stately" the automatically better approach?

[baby doll]

Oh, and I'm going to call bluff on criticisms that it shows no interest in ballet. Aronofsky does a lot to make ballet beautiful and committed and exciting. It's no where near The Red Shoes, but his heart is in the right place, and what makes "stately" the automatically better approach?He makes "exciting" by trying to hype it up with lots of spinning camerawork to the point that the actual dancing seems to get lost in a frenzy of quick cuts. It's like he doesn't trust audiences to be interested in ballet.

[Bosco B Thug]

He makes "exciting" by trying to hype it up with lots of spinning camerawork to the point that the actual dancing seems to get lost in a frenzy of quick cuts. It's like he doesn't trust audiences to be interested in ballet. It still seems a bit of a knee-jerk, as people are so sure Aronofsky hasn't the refinement to honor ballet's essentialism, yet here he is devoting a film to the portrayal of ballet as something serious and worth the most extreme artistic commitment, yet people turn against it because they assume dance's plasticity and its cerebral consumption is the only genuine aesthetic response to it. Aronofsky's emotional identification with Nina, embodied by his aestheticization of ballet as something experiential and esoterically phantasmagoric, is really the more important thing here than any culturati pandering.

[Derek]

culturati pandering.

This phrase needs to become a part of MatchCut's lexicon ASAP.

[Sven]

A lucid post, BBT.

[baby doll]

It still seems a bit of a knee-jerk, as people are so sure Aronofsky hasn't the refinement to honor ballet's essentialism, yet here he is devoting a film to the portrayal of ballet as something serious and worth the most extreme artistic commitment, yet people turn against it because they assume dance's plasticity and its cerebral consumption is the only genuine aesthetic response to it. Aronofsky's emotional identification with Nina, embodied by his aestheticization of ballet as something experiential and esoterically phantasmagoric, is really the more important thing here than any culturati pandering.I think the fundamental difference between this movie and, say, The Red Shoes (at least in terms of filming ballet) is that Aronofsky is less interested in the dancing than the dancer. For instance, in Powell's film when Anton Walbrook goes to see Moira Shearer perform for the first time, it's only when she stops dancing that we get that incredible close-up of her staring doe-like at Walbrook in the audience. In contrast, Aronofsky's film is more about the heroine's state of mind while she's dancing than the performance itself. (It's impossible to tell if the dancing is lousy or not, so we have to rely on the reactions of the in-film audience to know what to think.) Consequently, every ballet sequence in the film is the same as all the others. The dancers do different numbers, but Aronofsky films them in exactly the same way.

[DavidSeven]

Sounds like you're criticizing the film for not having the same approach to filming dance as The Red Shoes and nothing more. This isn't a live presentation of an actual ballet. It's a movie. I'm pretty sure Sylvester Stallone used more wide angle shots in Rocky's boxing scenes than Scorsese used in Raging Bull. So, I suppose we are now to assume that Scorsese has desecrated the art of boxing by not trusting the audience to be enthralled by the beauty of boxing alone in truth-seeking wide shots!

[baby doll]

Sounds like you're criticizing the film for not having the same approach to filming dance as The Red Shoes and nothing more. This isn't a live presentation of an actual ballet. It's a movie. I'm pretty sure Sylvester Stallone used more wide angle shots in Rocky's boxing scenes than Scorsese used in Raging Bull. So, I suppose we are now to assume that Scorsese has desecrated the art of boxing by not trusting the audience to be enthralled by the beauty of boxing alone in truth-seeking wide shots!I'm criticizing the movie for not being more varied stylistically. And I find it less cinematic than Powell's film in its handling of ballet (as well as its handling of everything else) for that reason.

[Boner M]

Despite my mixed feelings on the film, I think its stylistic variation is one of its strong suits. Striking mixture of naturalism and expressionism.

In fact, Bosco's almost convinced me to give it a another look.

[baby doll]

Despite my mixed feelings on the film, I think its stylistic variation is one of its strong suits. Striking mixture of naturalism and expressionism.

In fact, Bosco's almost convinced me to give it a another look.Which parts were supposed to be naturalistic?

[Bosco B Thug]

<-- Swan Queen of the Match-Cut Culturati, Fans of Haneke Chapter

[baby doll]

<-- Swan Queen of the Match-Cut Culturati, Fans of Haneke ChapterI think we can all agree that Black Swan is no La Pianiste.

[lovejuice]

I love it, but neither do I connect with its overt symbolism. Though I like how Aronofsky focuses on "perfection" as the character's flaw. The concept fits nicely with Swan Lake and Tchaikovsky. The movie works for me as a different interpretation on that classic story.

[Izzy Black]

I love it, but neither do I connect with its overt symbolism. Though I like how Aronofsky focuses on "perfection" as the character's flaw. The concept fits nicely with Swan Lake and Tchaikovsky. The movie works for me as a different interpretation on that classic story.

I personally didn't take "perfection" to be a character flaw at all. The film didn't strike me as tragic. Something much other than that, it seems. Something more basic and primal than tragedy. Perfection isn't cast as a virtue, either, I don't think. Aronofsky doesn't seem too interested in moralizing. It's too easy. I can relate to what you are sensing though. For me, it has the feel of a morality-play at times, but only in the way that an Opera does. But of course, Mozart and Verdi weren't interested in moralizing. I want to say their interest was more basic than what is otherwise suggested by the complex dramatics of their libretto. The music, like film, can almost be anthropological in its distance and otherworldly in its effect, in this way.

[Izzy Black]

Oh, and in general, I thought Black Swan was a very powerful, moving film.

[Grouchy]

This was a difficult film for me to take sides on, but ultimately, it's so well directed that I can't help but like it. I know, it sounds like faint praise, but it isn't. I was constantly grabbed and engaged by the movie while watching it. I just don't think it can hold up to any kind of serious analysis.

Aranofsky attempts to make a film about the discovery of female sexuality, paranoia and physical discipline, but his approach is more cartoonish than revealing. If you've ever seen one movie, you'll know where every scene in this one is going. Natalie's character Nina is a repressed soul at first, all her ballet classmates are all evil and driven in a Showgirls kinda way - she'll eventually travel from the White Swan she is now to the sexually empowered Black Swan. I believe the movie's writing employs a legitimate dramatic trick. As a man, some aspects of being a woman are difficult to imagine. So, let's just write it like we commonly imagine women are most likely to behave.

Unfortunately, this makes for a film that's more useful as a visual spectacle or as an unusual Horror than any kind of drama. Scenes with Vincent Cassell's slimy ballet teacher and Barbara Hershey's frustrated mother are interesting, for example (and they're both excellent actors handled by a superb director), but the plot of the movie moves the focal point away from these dramatic relationships and focuses instead on Nina's journey, which, frankly, isn't all that interesting. The movies that most frequently came to mind during this were Polanski's Repulsion and De Palma's Carrie. But both those films, dealing with the frightening and troublesome corners of sexual awakening, had protagonists that were more interesting, forceful and developed than Nina. Aranofsky doesn't seem so interested in her as a character than as an image that suits his purpose, and I think that makes this a lot less interesting than something like The Wrestler, where the protagonist has some kind of substance.

But, like I said, as a flamboyant Horror film, this is a great watch. The last 15 minutes of film are as visually powerful as anything else this year.

[Izzy Black]

I just don't think it can hold up to any kind of serious analysis.

(...)

Unfortunately, this makes for a film that's more useful as a visual spectacle or as an unusual Horror than any kind of drama.

Must a film succeed as a drama in order to hold up to serious analysis?

[DavidSeven]

I personally didn't take "perfection" to be a character flaw at all. The film didn't strike me as tragic. Something much other than that, it seems. Something more basic and primal than tragedy. Perfection isn't cast as a virtue, either, I don't think. Aronofsky doesn't seem too interested in moralizing. It's too easy. I can relate to what you are sensing though. For me, it has the feel of a morality-play at times, but only in the way that an Opera does. But of course, Mozart and Verdi weren't interested in moralizing. I want to say their interest was more basic than what is otherwise suggested by the complex dramatics of their libretto. The music, like film, can almost be anthropological in its distance and otherworldly in its effect, in this way.

Agreed. The film certainly tries to convey something human, but I just don't see it being a moral tale at all.

[Grouchy]

Must a film succeed as a drama in order to hold up to serious analysis?
No, that's true.

I just don't see enough depth in the film for my liking. I see it more as an exercise in style.

[Spun Lepton]

I love it, but neither do I connect with its overt symbolism. Though I like how Aronofsky focuses on "perfection" as the character's flaw. The concept fits nicely with Swan Lake and Tchaikovsky. The movie works for me as a different interpretation on that classic story.

Perfection isn't the character's flaw, it's her desire for perfection.

[megladon8]

Reading the YouTube comments on the track "Lose Yourself", it's neat to see how jut about everyone responded to it the same way:

That throbbing, pulsing bass just oozes sex.

And I totally agree. It's incredibly erotic.

[Ezee E]

Reading the YouTube comments on the track "Lose Yourself", it's neat to see how jut about everyone responded to it the same way:

That throbbing, pulsing bass just oozes sex.

And I totally agree. It's incredibly erotic.
Probably my favorite track of the album that I've heard so far.

And this is coming from the babydoll comment in the Matchies thread, but I don't think the idea is to say anything new about ballet, much less try to change it. THe idea was to be the "perfect ballerina" which has already been conceived. To try and cast someone of a different size would be a huge mistake, and really makes no sense anyway.

[baby doll]

And this is coming from the babydoll comment in the Matchies thread, but I don't think the idea is to say anything new about ballet, much less try to change it. THe idea was to be the "perfect ballerina" which has already been conceived. To try and cast someone of a different size would be a huge mistake, and really makes no sense anyway.I'm not saying he should have cast a bigger actress, but when Aronofsky has Portman throw up in a toilet in one scene and then never brings it up again, it feels like he's going through a checklist of clichés about the ballet world that he's required to honor: Anorexia, check. Overbearing mothers, check. Ballet is boring, check. Sluts are never on time for rehearsal, check.

[megladon8]

I'm pretty sure there were at least 2 bathroom scenes, one of her actively throwing up, and one of either a pre or post throw up session.

Regardless, this seems like a petty criticism and just grasping for straws.

[baby doll]

I'm pretty sure there were at least 2 bathroom scenes, one of her actively throwing up, and one of either a pre or post throw up session.

Regardless, this seems like a petty criticism and just grasping for straws.Well, I think it's indicative of a larger tendency in the film to reduce everything to shorthand (for instance, when Winona Ryder turns up at the fund raising event, her mascara is running and she's holding her drink way up high where the camera can see it, so that we know at a glance that she's drunk and upset).

[megladon8]

Well, I think it's indicative of a larger tendency in the film to reduce everything to shorthand (for instance, when Winona Ryder turns up at the fund raising event, her mascara is running and she's holding her drink way up high where the camera can see it, so that we know at a glance that she's drunk and upset).


What's wrong with that?

In True Grit you complained that everything took forever to be developed and the film just plodded along.

Here you complain that everything is too obvious and provided right up front with no room for thought.

With both films your criticisms boil down to chastising the film for not being the way you wanted it to be, and for it not being something it wasn't even trying to be in the first place.

You thought the ballet scenes should have been more like The Red Shoes...but this isn't The Red Shoes. This is Black Swan.

You wanted True Grit to be more like the John Wayne version...but it wasn't the John Wayne version, it was the Coen brothers' True Grit.

[baby doll]

What's wrong with that?

In True Grit you complained that everything took forever to be developed and the film just plodded along.

Here you complain that everything is too obvious and provided right up front with no room for thought.

With both films your criticisms boil down to chastising the film for not being the way you wanted it to be, and for it not being something it wasn't even trying to be in the first place.

You thought the ballet scenes should have been more like The Red Shoes...but this isn't The Red Shoes. This is Black Swan.

You wanted True Grit to be more like the John Wayne version...but it wasn't the John Wayne version, it was the Coen brothers' True Grit.Well, True Grit invites comparison with True Grit because it's a remake of that movie. Henry Hathaway went one way with the material (the fun way) and the Coens went the another (the Clint Eastwood way). I think the Hathway version is clearly superior.

In this case, the problem with Aronofsky relying so much on shorthand is that I feel like I've seen it all a million times.

[Fezzik]

Well, True Grit invites comparison with True Grit because it's a remake of that movie.

The Coens have said many times that their version of True Grit was not a remake, but a direct adaptation of the novel - and from all accounts it was more faithful to the source material than the 1969 version.

[baby doll]

The Coens have said many times that their version of True Grit was not a remake, but a direct adaptation of the novel - and from all accounts it was more faithful to the source material than the 1969 version.First of all, when has being more faithful to the book ever produced a better movie? I haven't read Stanislaw Lem's novel Solaris, but supposedly the Steven Soderbergh version is more faithful to the novel than Andrei Tarkovsky's, and we all know how that worked out.

As for it not being a remake, if the Coens actually said that, they're bullshitting, plain and simple. Henry Hathaway adapted the book once, and now they've adapted it again. That's a remake. It's not like there's anything shameful in doing a remake. Their version just sucks.

[Fezzik]

First of all, when has being more faithful to the book ever produced a better movie? I haven't read Stanislaw Lem's novel Solaris, but supposedly the Steven Soderbergh version is more faithful to the novel than Andrei Tarkovsky's, and we all know how that worked out.


Nowhere in my statement did I say which was better. I was simply stating that the Coens said it wasn't a remake.

[megladon8]

Soderbergh's >>>>>>>>>> Tarkovsky's

And I don't know or care which is more faithful to the book.

[Izzy Black]

I'm not saying he should have cast a bigger actress, but when Aronofsky has Portman throw up in a toilet in one scene and then never brings it up again, it feels like he's going through a checklist of clichés about the ballet world that he's required to honor: Anorexia, check. Overbearing mothers, check. Ballet is boring, check. Sluts are never on time for rehearsal, check.

Well, I think this is right. There's a fairly polemical but passionate editorial I think on the Daily Beast by a former professional ballet dancer that really fleshes out this charge, emphasizing the rather crass interpretation and shallow perpetration of false stereotypes the film casts on the ballet world. (Sorry if this article has already been discussed. I may have actually found the link to it on here, I can't remember.) I believe I read that many professional ballet dancers, workers, and artists had similar reactions. It's hard to say their reactions aren't justified. In fact, it's pretty easy to say that they are justified. But of course, it's not clear how weighty their worries should be taken with respect to the overall value of the film. Nevertheless, the criticism is valid enough that I can accept that it successfully works, in some margin, against Black Swan's favor.

On the other hand, it can be claimed that the film isn't interested in either erasing these cliches, avoiding them, or otherwise commenting on them; or possibly it could be maintained that the camp functions in a way to undercut, expose, or denigrate the cliches. It strikes me that we would need quite a bit in the way of argument to really sell this defense. As it stands, I find that at worst, the film is wholly guilty as charged (independent of its possible redeeming qualities), but I suspect, that even at best, it's at least partially guilty - even with the possibility of granting such transparency - just in virtue of what appears to be an overall lack of interest in any self-critical scrutiny. I would, of course, be very eager to see opposing arguments that could potentially vindicate the film altogether on this front.

[Izzy Black]

As one might expect, I don't find the above stated worries to be of an especially damaging weakness, even if a weakness no less. I personally favor the more modest view that the film survives by not taking its commitment to genre too seriously through the use of camp. This has the consequence of casting [I]some degree of artifice on any and all genre tropes it so chooses to lock itself into.

Setting this charge aside, though, the film still has a lot of value for this particular viewer. The film succeeds for me at various levels due to its depiction of an artist - that is, a woman - struggling to acquire meaning through her craft (or, as we might say, her preferred medium of meaning). It's true that she's interested in perfection (thus familiarly enacting the somewhat dubious ballet cliche), but it does not seem to be an arbitrary commitment to perfection. It's not perfection in terms of some mindless, work-obsession, but an obsession, or rather a compulsive attachment to acquiring some distantly perceived essence of greatness, a greatness that entirely justifies the confusion, suffering, anxiety, and pain-staking labour that it took to get there. (The notion that this desire for perfection is otherwise reducible to itself suggests that she has a relevant choice to be perfect at her craft rather than imperfect; here, there's no meaningful distinction. She can't help not to desire perfection - there's a one-to-one correlation with her compulsion for meaning. It is here I disagree with the author of The Beast article. She seemed to suggest the pursuit of perfection was somehow arbitrary. On this very important score, then, the film's use of a stereotype may not be interpreted as a weakness, especially if it loses its false representation.) At one level, what I am discussing is a somewhat obvious theme, perhaps, but what's interesting about it is that it rises above a theme merely about the boundaries between "life and work/art" and how they intertwine. The film never even accepts or establishes this distinction as somehow obvious. There's no inquiry into the possibility of living "life" independently of her art. Devotion to one necessarily assumes devotion to the other. Or, better, this isn't even a question the film cares to investigate.

The film's investigation is more brute, more primal or fundamental. It deals with this insatiable need or desire for meaning and fulfillment. Now, certainly, many great films, especially art films, deal with this general schema. But where, say, Sofia Coppola explores how one's society/environment, for example, both enables and complicates this general goal, Aronofsky explores the nature of the drive itself for obsessives, rather than the mere means or motivation. In this way, there's a clear distance from the subject matter (I suggested this in my first post when I talked about the overall irrelevance of the dramatics, and hence, to some extent, "the ballet world.") He's far more interested in the compulsion itself, and what it does to those who are uncompromising in their commitment to achieving fulfillment. This makes him unique, in my belief. He also resists making judgments of value. The "essence" attained in Black Swan is no "worse" or "better" than the drug-induced high attained in Requiem for A Dream, or the transcendence of making peace with mortality in The Fountain. Although, in each film there's almost a sense in which the film seems to cast doubt on the legitimacy of these respective paths by showing the amount of anxiety and seemingly self-destructive suffering it took to reach these goals, the suspicion falls just short of any commentary and remains at the level of mere curiosity.

I'll stop here for now. I am sure I could flesh some of these thoughts out some more, but these are my preliminary reactions to the film (or, the first time writing them out.)

[DavidSeven]

Spot on, I think. The common criticism seems to be that moralizing the drive for perfection and drawing good/evil lines is neither deep nor interesting, but I've been trying to say from the beginning that this isn't really what the film is about. The film is about expressing an entirely human quality, existent in probably all people to varying degrees. It would be foolish to cast as "wrong" or "right" this essential human desire -- the desire to be great, to be known as great at something. I think this film expresses this compulsion (ratcheted to the sky for dramatic effect) about as well as other films that traverse similar territory. Ultimately, the movie is about expressing human emotionality, not defining it or categorizing it. In this, I think it's incredibly successful and I refer to the post above to explain why.

[Izzy Black]

Spot on, I think. The common criticism seems to be that moralizing the drive for perfection and drawing good/evil lines is neither deep nor interesting, but I've been trying to say from the beginning that this isn't really what the film is about. The film is about expressing an entirely human quality, existent in probably all people to varying degrees. It would be foolish to cast as "wrong" or "right" this essential human desire -- the desire to be great, to be known as great at something. I think this film expresses this compulsion (ratcheted to the sky for dramatic effect) about as well as other films that traverse similar territory. Ultimately, the movie is about expressing human emotionality, not defining it or categorizing it. In this, I think it's incredibly successful and I refer to the post above to explain why.

Yes! I agree with you.

[B-side]

I was gonna rep you, Izzy, but it seems I've run out for the night. Tomorrow, perhaps. Good to see you around.

[lovejuice]

Regarding ballet cliches, I agree with Baby Doll. This is why, I think, The Company is a superior film. Yet this might in turn support Israfel's comment since Aronofsky's artistic aim is vastly different from Altman. For what he is trying to do, cliches don't hurt.

[Izzy Black]

Regarding ballet cliches, I agree with Baby Doll. This is why, I think, The Company is a superior film. Yet this might in turn support Israfel's comment since Aronofsky's artistic aim is vastly different from Altman. For what he is trying to do, cliches don't hurt.
The Company is a wonderful film. The Company doesn't altogether escape certain cliches of ballet, however. But in its case, it's not really a threat to the proceedings, since it's a much more self-aware film. It's exploratory.

But, in general, I think the cliches do seem to work against Aronofsky's film at some level. I just think the damage is minimal.

As for a comparison, it's close, but I think despite its problems, Black Swan strikes me as the slightly more ambitious film. It's really close though. I love them both.

[lovejuice]

As for a comparison, it's close, but I think despite its problems, Black Swan strikes me as the slightly more ambitious film. It's really close though. I love them both.
There is no question about the lack of ambition in The Company. BS is made by a rising American director, and TC by a man who probably realizes he doesn't have many years left. Its lack of ambition is among its biggest charm, imo.

I am interested in what you mean by its self-awareness. To me, BS, since it's aiming for some cult sentimentality like you said, is a more self-aware between the two.

[Eleven]

There is no question about the lack of ambition in The Company. BS is made by a rising American director, and TC by an English man who probably realizes he doesn't have many years left. Its lack of ambition is among its biggest charm, imo.

I am interested in what you mean by its self-awareness. To me, BS, since it's aiming for some cult sentimentality like you said, is a more self-aware between the two.

Altman is so not English. But other than that, good post, especially about BS's self-awareness.

[lovejuice]

Altman is so not English. But other than that, good post, especially about BS's self-awareness.
fixed. :shame:

[Raiders]

Are we talking about a lack of narrative ambition with regards to Altman's film? I would say it is quite ambitious formally in not only attempting to capture the beauty of ballet on film but to take what is little more than a glamour project for Neve Campbell and stretch it into a fascinating, fly-on-the-wall view of the artistic process, particularly in its profound reflection back on Altman himself.

As Israfel said, it is a vastly different film than Black Swan, but it fits so much more gracefully into my own personal aesthetic preferences. It almost unassumedly captures very emotional moments and both the drama, tragedy and beauty of the ballet world; meanwhile Aronofsky's film, as dedicated as it is, cares much more about Portman's personal struggles that start internally and slowly become more and more external. It's claustophobic, feverish view of her struggles is compelling, but I couldn't help but be very disappointed that this fight for notariety, for perfection, that she undergoes remained something of a mystery to me because the film had no perspective on just what balletic grace, beauty and performance truly looks like. Ultimately I came away feeling like I had witnessed an intense emotional struggle in a vacuum with little relevance to any great meaning. I knew what she was trying to obtain from context clues but very little context itself and as such, my involvement and ultimate emotional reaction was greatly tempered by a feeling that for all the rigorous formal attempts to create a haunting emotional upheaval I never really did understand what it was all for; I never got a true, clear-eyed glimpse of the end goal of the struggle. Unlike P&P's The Red Shoes, a film very much also about the struggle to obtain balletic perfection (though one with a more spiritual aura), Aronofsky never pulls back enough, or lingers enough, to create that image of dancing beauty that is the goal and it crippled the film for me.

[Melville]

Ultimately I came away feeling like I had witnessed an intense emotional struggle in a vacuum with little relevance to any great meaning.
This is what I like about it: it explores the raw stuff of experience itself, what the experience as experience comprises for the character, rather than a broader context it can be made to fit within. I find such phenomenological explorations more meaningful than any other kind, since they go directly to what it means to exist as a human being—a conscious, active experience of the world. I prefer other movies (e.g. Edvard Munch) that provide that kind of exploration in a richer way that folds context into the experience, realizing that experience is inherently contextual in that the experiencer's state of mind also folds its context into itself. However, the extremeness—the claustrophobic confinement to perception, emotion, and desire—of Black Swan is interesting too, in that it cuts away much of what constitutes experience in order to arrive at a kind of abstracted, "pure" subjective experience underneath.

[dreamdead]

I guess my main problem with BS is that it hits so many of the same feverish beats that Aronofsky already did in RFaD that it feels almost needless. The Harry/Marion phone call has the same echo here with Nina and her mom, as does the fatalistic ending, many of the same editing techniques. But whereas that one had quality actors anchoring the film, albeit still chewing some heavy scenery, this one surrenders entirely to the mediocre script.

[Izzy Black]

but I couldn't help but be very disappointed that this fight for notariety, for perfection, that she undergoes remained something of a mystery to me because the film had no perspective on just what balletic grace, beauty and performance truly looks like. [...] Unlike P&P's The Red Shoes, a film very much also about the struggle to obtain balletic perfection (though one with a more spiritual aura), Aronofsky never pulls back enough, or lingers enough, to create that image of dancing beauty that is the goal and it crippled the film for me.

I find these moments are captured in the wondrous opening titles of the film and of course the conclusion. It seems strange a ballet film would have its best dance moments as mere bookends, but it seems right, since this film isn't about ballet simpliciter, as the aforementioned films are. I think it's right to keep these other notable films within reference, but it's also important to note significant contrasts. In very plain terms, Black Swan just isn't a film about ballet (taken in and of itself and/or in any general terms). The other two films are more so, at least.

[Izzy Black]

There is no question about the lack of ambition in The Company.

Well I wouldn't go so far as to say to say the film lacks ambition. I just find Black Swan to be more ambitious, even if only slightly so. Ambition alone doesn't sell greatness, but I tend to prefer this quality in film.

[fvr]

Haven't been to this movie yet, but I must admit I'm very courious about whether it's a flaw or not. Pi was a cult movie, love it, but Fountain is really bad. Portman is not my fave. But I liked her performance overall in V for Vendetta.
So I'm holding my breath. I hope it's good, for the sake of all the production and people involved in the project.:pritch:

[transmogrifier]

I'm not a fan of films that focus on the psychological disturbances of a single character at the expense of everything else; by that I mean, I prefer to see characters interact with external events and react accordingly (and this could well be according to their demented state of mind, which is fine, and internally logical within the film), but I dislike films that have characters act is a disturbed manner as a matter of course and then simply have everyone else react to them. It's boring to me, because I don't find mental illness by itself interesting. I know that the world is full of people who are simply crazy and following them around you would just see a sequence of bizarre behaviours independent of whatever is happening around them. But I'm not interested in doing that, and I'm not interested in spending 2 hours watching a fictionalized version of that.

(To illustrate: love Taxi Driver, hate The Piano Teacher)

Black Swan skirts this line. Frankly, I couldn't give a shit about Portman's "dilemma" because it was totally insular and happening in a void (much as Raiders has expressed) - and as such, the entire story rests of the unpredictable mental state of the lead character, and thus from scene to scene there is no tension or flow. Any old shit can happen, so why bother getting invested? There is no real entry point, because at heart, it is cliched tale - the pressure of expectation, going beyond yourself and gaining perfection. And? The mental illness aspect doesn't add anything to it - it just makes the trip less tangible, more arbitrary, and thus (to me) less meaningful.

What almost saves the film is the direction, or at least the isolated moments of memorable images (involving mirrors a lot of the time) and the ballet sequences, which do well to center Portman in the sea of her torment. It's not a bad film, really, just a very, very conventional story made aimless in its search for a lurid trashiness that can't be this calculated.

[Izzy Black]

Interesting post! I'll be back later on to (kindly) respond some points. I'm glad this thread still has legs. Probably because I don't watch enough movies anymore to post in others, hah.

[Irish]

Just watched this last night.

Kept thinking of Polanski in the 60s and those Italian giallo's by whats-his-name made around the same time.

A few times the obvious visual cues, the lurid set design, the jarring sound had me barking with laughter, but by the end I was choked up.

I guess that's what good melodrama is supposed to do.

Still, points off because Aronofsky is covering his old stomping grounds and I can't get away from the feeling this is another Far From Heaven kind of film.

A little too much homage and not enough originality.

I don't know who deserved what in terms of awards, but this movie only gets nominated in a really thin field.


Unlike P&P's The Red Shoes, a film very much also about the struggle to obtain balletic perfection (though one with a more spiritual aura), Aronofsky never pulls back enough, or lingers enough, to create that image of dancing beauty that is the goal and it crippled the film for me.

I can't talk about the Red Shoes, but Black Swan had little to nothing to do with ballet.


It still seems a bit of a knee-jerk, as people are so sure Aronofsky hasn't the refinement to honor ballet's essentialism, yet here he is devoting a film to the portrayal of ballet as something serious and worth the most extreme artistic commitment, yet people turn against it because they assume dance's plasticity and its cerebral consumption is the only genuine aesthetic response to it. Aronofsky's emotional identification with Nina, embodied by his aestheticization of ballet as something experiential and esoterically phantasmagoric, is really the more important thing here than any culturati pandering.

Pretty sure you just murdered the English language with this post.

[Raiders]

I can't talk about the Red Shoes, but Black Swan had little to nothing to do with ballet.

This has been covered already. It's a film about a girl who's goal is perfection in ballet and most of the film takes place in the world of a ballet company. So, sure, the film is not actually about the art of ballet, but it uses ballet to make its points. Regardless, as I said this has been heavily discussed already and it doesn't change my point.

[Boner M]

Pretty sure you just murdered the English language with this post.
Pretty sure you just murdered the chillaxed, fuddy-duddy-free atmosphere on this board with your return.

[Bosco B Thug]

Pretty sure you just murdered the English language with this post. Your face just got murdered. Oooh wait, that's not comedic.

Argento? Black Swan a Haynes-like throwback? Though yeah I guess the idea of Black Swan as revamped body-genre melodrama has been thrown out a lot.

[Irish]

This has been covered already. It's a film about a girl who's goal is perfection in ballet and most of the film takes place in the world of a ballet company.

Small copy edit. My point is her goals have nothing to do with ballet in and of itself (at least not nearly in the same way as in something like Red Shoes).

Black Swan is about as much about ballet as Raging Bull is about boxing, which is to say, when you get below the surface, not at all.

But it doesn't sound like you want to talk about it at all, so okay.

[Raiders]

Small copy edit. My point is her goals have nothing to do with ballet in and of itself (at least not nearly in the same way as in something like Red Shoes).

Black Swan is about as much about ballet as Raging Bull is about boxing, which is to say, when you get below the surface, not at all.

But it doesn't sound like you want to talk about it at all, so okay.

I'll talk about it, fine. But I don't see your point. You're acting as if the ballet is incidental. It's not incidental to the story of the film and the film's own idea for how she seeks the image of perfection. An image the film does not ever convey in any tangible way.

[Irish]

You're acting as if the ballet is incidental. It's not incidental to the story of the film and the film's own idea for how she seeks the image of perfection. An image the film does not ever convey in any tangible way.

That's my interpretation of the character, from her last lines in the movie. You could take her and plop her down in any other universe and she'd act the same way. So would her mother.

The movie is set in the world of ballet, but that's just a vehicle. The movie could have been set in any other creative or athletic universe and played out the same way.

[Eleven]

Wasn't this originally set in off-Broadway theater and then rewritten for the world of ballet? Pretty sure I read that somewhere.

[transmogrifier]

That's my interpretation of the character, from her last lines in the movie. You could take her and plop her down in any other universe and she'd act the same way. So would her mother. .

Which is why the movie ain't all that good, incidentally.

[Mysterious Dude]

"The young people today -- they think they can dance with their faces!"
- Ginger Rogers, re: Staying Alive (1983)

[Winston*]

The movie is set in the world of ballet, but that's just a vehicle. The movie could have been set in any other creative or athletic universe and played out the same way.

The film of a discus thrower who thinks she's turning into a swan would be pretty weird.

[Ezee E]

Swans fly. She's throwing a disc that she thinks will turn into a swan.

Problem. Solved.

[DavidSeven]

OK, so how does a movie being ballet, being about ballet, having a ballet setting but not being a ballet, or having a ballet setting but not being about ballet enhance or detract from a film again? Does that in itself make something entertaining or boring for you? Does it take away from the technical merits of the film? Does it make the enterprise less convincing thematically or dramatically? What point is trying to be made here? Connect it to some point, crazies (baby doll or trannie)!

[baby doll]

OK, so how does a movie being ballet, being about ballet, having a ballet setting but not being a ballet, or having a ballet setting but not being about ballet enhance or detract from a film again? Does that in itself make something entertaining or boring for you? Does it take away from the technical merits of the film? Does it make the enterprise less convincing thematically or dramatically? What point is trying to be made here? Connect it to some point, crazies (baby doll or trannie)!Let's forget about ballet for a second: The movie still sucks in a Mommie Dearest unintentional camp sort of way, and the direction is lousy.

[transmogrifier]

OK, so how does a movie being ballet, being about ballet, having a ballet setting but not being a ballet, or having a ballet setting but not being about ballet enhance or detract from a film again? Does that in itself make something entertaining or boring for you? Does it take away from the technical merits of the film? Does it make the enterprise less convincing thematically or dramatically? What point is trying to be made here? Connect it to some point, crazies (baby doll or trannie)!

Perhaps it would just be easier to read what I've already written.


I'm not a fan of films that focus on the psychological disturbances of a single character at the expense of everything else; by that I mean, I prefer to see characters interact with external events and react accordingly (and this could well be according to their demented state of mind, which is fine, and internally logical within the film), but I dislike films that have characters act is a disturbed manner as a matter of course and then simply have everyone else react to them. It's boring to me, because I don't find mental illness by itself interesting. I know that the world is full of people who are simply crazy and following them around you would just see a sequence of bizarre behaviours independent of whatever is happening around them. But I'm not interested in doing that, and I'm not interested in spending 2 hours watching a fictionalized version of that.

(To illustrate: love Taxi Driver, hate The Piano Teacher)

Black Swan skirts this line. Frankly, I couldn't give a shit about Portman's "dilemma" because it was totally insular and happening in a void (much as Raiders has expressed) - and as such, the entire story rests of the unpredictable mental state of the lead character, and thus from scene to scene there is no tension or flow. Any old shit can happen, so why bother getting invested? There is no real entry point, because at heart, it is cliched tale - the pressure of expectation, going beyond yourself and gaining perfection. And? The mental illness aspect doesn't add anything to it - it just makes the trip less tangible, more arbitrary, and thus (to me) less meaningful.

What almost saves the film is the direction, or at least the isolated moments of memorable images (involving mirrors a lot of the time) and the ballet sequences, which do well to center Portman in the sea of her torment. It's not a bad film, really, just a very, very conventional story made aimless in its search for a lurid trashiness that can't be this calculated.

[Dead & Messed Up]

There is no excuse for me not seeing this film until now. Glad I did. I thought it was a little rote at the beginning, with so many scenes covering the frigid/passion problem, but the story accumulated. The final forty minutes were absolutely gripping. I think once Nina took Lily home, the film gets out of first gear and floors it for the rest of the trip.

Amazing visuals. At first I thought the mirrors were a cheap symbolism, but they do more than represent "doubles." They represent the constant pressure Nina puts on her image, and how that extends to all the ballerinas. Constantly judging themselves, constantly watching for fear of errors. This technique could just as easily be used in a film about anorexia (and there are intimations of this, after all). I also dug the decision to film so many transitional scenes with the camera on Nina's back. It not only hints at weight on her shoulders - it also denies us understanding, since we don't see her face. We're left to wonder.

Cassel and Kunis worked alright, but Hershey was the real supporter. I loved how her love for Nina was abusive, sincere, kind, concerned...it was all very messy.

I don't know that Aronofsky needed those CGI effects, but at least he was judicious with them.

Dark, dazzling fun, stylish and memorable.

[Spinal]

I have a confession. When I talk with people in real life about this movie, I pretend to like it more than I actually do. It just makes things more comfortable.

[baby doll]

I have a confession. When I talk with people in real life about this movie, I pretend to like it more than I actually do. It just makes things more comfortable.I have a similar "do not engage" policy regarding The King's Speech. It just seems sort of, well, mean to crap all over it when "normal" people say how much they like it. So I just nod politely and move on to another topic.

Incidentally, when people ask me what my favorite movie is, the answer changes depending on whom I'm talking to. In Canada if I were talking to a stranger (a cab driver, for instance), I'd say Rear Window because there's a chance they might have heard of it. (They used to show Hitchcock's films on CBC during the summer when the hockey season ended, though I'm not sure if they still do.) In China, since it does matter what I say, I usually say L'Année dernière Ã* Marienbad.

[Sycophant]

I have a confession. When I talk with people in real life about this movie, I pretend to like it more than I actually do. It just makes things more comfortable.

Something I've learned: Not liking The Dark Knight (and other movies of its, um, ilk) can be a severe hindrance in communicating with my peers. It can make things awkward and doesn't really gain me anything.

[Dead & Messed Up]

I have a confession. When I talk with people in real life about this movie, I pretend to like it more than I actually do. It just makes things more comfortable.

Just so you know, Spinal, you don't have to pretend for me.

[Fezzik]

I have a similar "do not engage" policy regarding The King's Speech. It just seems sort of, well, mean to crap all over it when "normal" people say how much they like it. So I just nod politely and move on to another topic.


My friends have started to see through this tactic with me. When they start talking about a movie and I get quiet, one of them will say something like "I guess you didn't like it all that much, eh Dan?"

But at least they don't press me on it.

[Spinal]

Just so you know, Spinal, you don't have to pretend for me.

:lol:

Oh, I won't. Didn't mean to be condescending. Just realized that I had discussed this movie with friends recently and said things I didn't expect myself to say.

[MadMan]

Probably would have to rewatch this to do a proper review, but I thought it was a really great film. Then again the last half descends into body horror somewhat, and hey it reminded me of how Cronenberg does it, and I like Cronenberg, so Aronofsky had my attention there.

Considering that many of my friends actually share similar film taste, I don't have to worry about what I really say around them. And usually I'm rather blunt and don't care if they liked a certain movie, although it depends on what the movie is somewhat. If one of them told me they willingly saw Twilight and liked it, I would call them moron, only with lots of curse words involved.

[Dead & Messed Up]

I'm pretty lucky in that most of my friends are cinephiles, so I have no problem saying that they're wrong. They laugh and say that I'm wrong, and then we talk about the movie.

[Izzy Black]

I'm not a fan of films that focus on the psychological disturbances of a single character at the expense of everything else; by that I mean, I prefer to see characters interact with external events and react accordingly (and this could well be according to their demented state of mind, which is fine, and internally logical within the film), but I dislike films that have characters act is a disturbed manner as a matter of course and then simply have everyone else react to them.

It's not entirely clear to me what you mean by a preference for characters that interact with and react to external events. It seems like you want to say something about the fact that there does not seem to be a real explanation for why Nina is the way she is (or, at least, does what she does) from the perspective of her interpersonal interactions. That is, we cannot point to any real causal cues in her environment or surroundings that seem to give an insight into the origin or nature of her condition and/or behavior. If this is what you are saying, then you are to some extent right (although I think you overstate the issue, as I address below), but at most what you have said is that you don't find this particular quality interesting. You seem to give some indications as to why you feel this way below.


It's boring to me, because I don't find mental illness by itself interesting.

I don't think the film is about her mental illness. In particular, the film isn't interested in her compulsive and hallucinatory symptoms as ends in themselves. They are interpreted through reflections on the creation of personal meaning and human purpose. You might reply that, nevertheless, you would like to see her behavior explained more as something reactive to her environment. I can respect the matter as one of preference, although I do not personally see any intrinsic appeal for one strategy over another.


I know that the world is full of people who are simply crazy and following them around you would just see a sequence of bizarre behaviours independent of whatever is happening around them. But I'm not interested in doing that, and I'm not interested in spending 2 hours watching a fictionalized version of that.

It isn't a matter of simply observing some unexplainable phenomenon of bizarre behavior from a distance. As I said above, you seem to be looking for an explanatory story of her behavior, and there is one, it just simply isn't explained entirely in terms of environmental influences on her behavior (i.e. character interactions). There is an explanation for Nina's sickness to the extent that the illness is (to some extent) the byproduct of her intentional conscious will and (to some extent), entirely beyond her control. So, given what I have said above, while I don't think the film is especially interested in explaining her behavior in terms of environmental causes (although, we can certainly make some gestures at various generalizations, given the overall culture of the ballet world), I do think the film is interested in various causal explanations of her behavior. In particular, the nature of her compulsion and obsession, where it derives from, and to what extent, it's under her cognitive control. But most importantly, I think the film is interested in to what extent her condition is thought to reflect and represent what's valuable and important in life.


(To illustrate: love Taxi Driver, hate The Piano Teacher)

I am struggling to see fine distinctions here. If you are wanting to primarily point to social cues as an explanation for Travis Bickle's condition and behavior in Taxi Driver (i.e., action explained in terms of character interaction), you can certainly maintain this level of analysis for The Piano Teacher as well. Beyond the fact that I flat disagree with intrinsically valuing one sort of explanation for character action over another, I think the matter is generally more complex and don't think the distinctions you are trying to establish strike me as altogether clear. It's slightly more clear in the case of Black Swan, but I don't think it's as clear as you seem to think it is, nor do I think that the film ultimately boils down to a story about and/or explanation of behavior/psychology and nothing else.


Black Swan skirts this line. Frankly, I couldn't give a shit about Portman's "dilemma" because it was totally insular and happening in a void (much as Raiders has expressed) - and as such, the entire story rests of the unpredictable mental state of the lead character, and thus from scene to scene there is no tension or flow.

I don't agree that her dilemma was totally insular insofar as it suggests that it was "happening in a void." Circumstances and dramatic situations do a great deal of work in determining what she does in this film, even if not all the work. Secondly, I don't agree that her mental states were unpredictable, even if they were unstable and/or belong to a manic continuum.


Any old shit can happen, so why bother getting invested? There is no real entry point, because at heart, it is cliched tale - the pressure of expectation, going beyond yourself and gaining perfection. And? The mental illness aspect doesn't add anything to it - it just makes the trip less tangible, more arbitrary, and thus (to me) less meaningful.

I believe this analysis is incorrect. There are a lot of cliches in the film, but I do not think the overall tale Aronofsky is interesting in telling is cliched. It's not simply about the pressure of expectation and the pursuit of perfection. I address this in my initial post in this thread. The film considers the idea and value of perfection by exploring how an agent attempts to justify a commitment to an ideal. Actually, the suggestion is stronger than this: for this particular agent, there's no questioning the fact that the ends justify the means. The question of justification is left more for us to contemplate.

[transmogrifier]

.....There is an explanation for Nina's sickness to the extent that the illness is (to some extent) the byproduct of her intentional conscious will and (to some extent), entirely beyond her control.

.....I am struggling to see fine distinctions here. If you are wanting to primarily point to social cues as an explanation for Travis Bickle's condition and behavior in Taxi Driver.

It's hard now to go back to the particulars of this movie because its been a while since I wrote this, and I have barely thought about it since then. One thing I can add, though, is that I never wanted an explanation for her "illness", as that is somewhat beside the point. Not all characters need backstory.

Rather, when it comes to a satisfactory story in a fictional movie, I prefer to see the interaction between the external (events that happen to you, what other people say and do) and the internal (how you process information, your natural personality etc). For me, this movie had too much emphasis on the internal, and many of her actions seemed to be divorced of the external cues, and that's just not interesting to me at all, to follow a character so driven by internal impulses that ehr actions come across as essentially arbitrary. Explaining why she is like that in the first place isn't going to help.

[Izzy Black]

It's hard now to go back to the particulars of this movie because its been a while since I wrote this, and I have barely thought about it since then.

No problem.


One thing I can add, though, is that I never wanted an explanation for her "illness", as that is somewhat beside the point. Not all characters need backstory.

OK. The worry is when you talked about following characters that exhibit "bizarre behaviours independent of whatever is happening around them." I don't think there is this kind of independence in the film.


Rather, when it comes to a satisfactory story in a fictional movie, I prefer to see the interaction between the external (events that happen to you, what other people say and do) and the internal (how you process information, your natural personality etc). For me, this movie had too much emphasis on the internal, and many of her actions seemed to be divorced of the external cues, and that's just not interesting to me at all, to follow a character so driven by internal impulses that ehr actions come across as essentially arbitrary. Explaining why she is like that in the first place isn't going to help.

Again, I don't think these distinctions are so fine. I think for some movies the internal impulses are clearer to to the audience than in other movies (Aronofsky's own films), but that doesn't mean these characters aren't meaningfully affected by their worlds. And more often times than not, I would assume this makes a better movie, since we have a more robust sense of the inner-life of the protagonist. In the case of Nina, her interactions with Lily, her mother, and Thomas all have a major impact on her emotions and behavior. Secondly, I don't see how following a character driven by internal impulses is arbitrary or pointless.

[Mara]

All the posts reminded me that I had meant to see this. So I did.

And I'm torn. I can't deny that I was fascinated the entire way through, and Portman's emotionally and mentally fragile performance was really strong. Some of the visuals were great.

But the symbolism was so repeatedly, mercilessly bludgeoned into me that I was exhausted and annoyed by it half way through the film. The film, to me, felt unforgivably obvious. If it had toned itself down, embraced a little subtlety, and punched up the script a little more, I think this could potentially have been brilliant.

[[ETM]]

I still haven't seen it. It's been discussed and parodied to death, I sort of feel like I should wait and see it from more of a distance.

[Spinal]

The film, to me, felt unforgivably obvious. If it had toned itself down, embraced a little subtlety, and punched up the script a little more, I think this could potentially have been brilliant.

Straight-up truth. I'm always bewildered when people describe it as a mysterious, ambiguous mindbender. It's a pretty blunt, shallow film, though not without its pleasures.

[Mara]

Yes, I don't want to make it sound like I hated it. I didn't. In fact, part of my frustration was that the film had so much potential and so many great aspects to work with and yet fell short of what it could have been.

[Mara]

Straight-up truth. I'm always bewildered when people describe it as a mysterious, ambiguous mindbender. It's a pretty blunt, shallow film, though not without its pleasures.

Well, it's mysterious in the sense that it doesn't spell out for you what is going on all the time, narratively. It would be futile to try and figure out which things truly happened in the film and which were hallucinations. Also, it never gives people comfortable little diagnoses and boxes (OCD? Schizophrenic? Anorexic? Bipolar-- the mother?)

But thematically it's pretty ham-fisted.

[Dead & Messed Up]

But thematically it's pretty ham-fisted.

Definitely. I thought it was wearying how every scene with Cassel was him saying, "You have ze technique, but you lack ze passion."

[StanleyK]

I didn't care much for this seven years ago and a rewatch now hasn't improved it. My biggest problem is that the horror is completely ineffective (I also had the same problem with Requiem for a Dream in parts, especially the refrigerator, although overall I enjoyed that movie more); everything that was meant to be scary or unnerving (the paintings moving their eyes, the bathtub scene, the mirrors) was totally risible to me. It didn't help that Aronofsky relies almost exclusively on jump scares and horror music stings, two tropes I really dislike. I think the movie is generally well-directed and Portman's performance is quite good (even if it undermined by the subpar supporting cast), but as a horror/thriller it completely fails.

[Dukefrukem]

I had a similar revisit lately and my appreciation of the movie has dropped considerably. It's interesting that you point out the jump scares here, because they are virtually non-existent in mother! with a rare exception in the opening scene.