Black Swan
Mon, Dec. 13th, 2010 08:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scarlettinaI've been a huge fan of the director Darren Aronofsky since I first saw his first film, Pi, a movie which might be most economically summarized as being about math, Jewish mysticism, and trepanning--but it's so much more. The film's key characteristics--its darkness and intensity, its complex interpersonal relationships, its mystical underpinnings, its psychological thriller approach--have come to epitomize much of what has been seen in the films Aronofsky has made since then, including The Wrestler, Requiem for a Dream, and The Fountain (an ambitious but fatally flawed film if there ever was one). So when I heard about Black Swan, I was so there I wasn't even here.
The movie, starring Natalie Portman, is about Nina, a ballerina cast in Swan Lake to play both the white and black swans. As she works to perfect her performance, her obsession for perfection begins to take its toll. The movie pivots on what may be interpreted either as her falling under the spell of the ballet and the black swan's seductive hold, or as Nina slowly losing her grip on reality. Each character in the film has a loose parallel to a character in the ballet. Portman is terrific--beautiful, vulnerable, completely on the edge. Barbara Hershey brilliantly and chillingly plays her mother Erica (I wouldn't be surprised to see an Academy Award nomination for her work here), a former ballerina who gave up her career to have her daughter. She supports and smothers Nina to both help her become the prima ballerina she wants to be and to keep her emotionally about 12 years old. Three other characters figure large in Nina's journey: Lily, another ballerina who may either be a friend or a vicious, manipulative competitor; Thomas, the director, who seduces and coaxes the black swan into Nina's awareness and performance; and Beth (played by a nearly unrecognizable Winona Ryder who reminded me of Anne Bancroft in The Turning Point here), the ballerina nearing the end of her career.
In typical Aronofsky style, the film isn't afraid to go to the darkest corners of its characters: Erica's obsessive mothering, Beth's self-destructiveness, and Nina's own fight for independence as it manifests in rebellion against her mother and in the dark embrace of the black swan and the chilling transformation it makes upon her. Also in typical Aronofsky style, the way that darkness manifests is visible in all its flinch-inducing weirdness and violence. It's not ongoing grossness, but rather two or so instances of shocking incidents that produced gasps from the audience as a whole. The ways the world warps from Nina's perspective, the unreliability of her perception, takes the film firmly into psychological thriller territory, and the director makes sure you're not sure what is real and what is in Nina's head.
I still find myself trying to decide where Nina's grip on reality begins to loosen up, where the spell of the ballet begins to mess with her head. It's fascinating and occasionally disturbing stuff, especially when the dark swan begins to emerge from Nina in uncomfortably tangible ways.
The movie is excellent, uncomfortable, fascinating. Portman and Hershey both give great performances. I want to see it again to take apart the threads of the story and try to pick out how and where Nina's world fractures and coalesces. One thing's for sure: it messes with her head, and ours. Definitely recommended but not, perhaps, for those with parent-child issues or for the squeamish (unless you're willing to close your eyes at one or two points in the film--which I did).
The movie, starring Natalie Portman, is about Nina, a ballerina cast in Swan Lake to play both the white and black swans. As she works to perfect her performance, her obsession for perfection begins to take its toll. The movie pivots on what may be interpreted either as her falling under the spell of the ballet and the black swan's seductive hold, or as Nina slowly losing her grip on reality. Each character in the film has a loose parallel to a character in the ballet. Portman is terrific--beautiful, vulnerable, completely on the edge. Barbara Hershey brilliantly and chillingly plays her mother Erica (I wouldn't be surprised to see an Academy Award nomination for her work here), a former ballerina who gave up her career to have her daughter. She supports and smothers Nina to both help her become the prima ballerina she wants to be and to keep her emotionally about 12 years old. Three other characters figure large in Nina's journey: Lily, another ballerina who may either be a friend or a vicious, manipulative competitor; Thomas, the director, who seduces and coaxes the black swan into Nina's awareness and performance; and Beth (played by a nearly unrecognizable Winona Ryder who reminded me of Anne Bancroft in The Turning Point here), the ballerina nearing the end of her career.
In typical Aronofsky style, the film isn't afraid to go to the darkest corners of its characters: Erica's obsessive mothering, Beth's self-destructiveness, and Nina's own fight for independence as it manifests in rebellion against her mother and in the dark embrace of the black swan and the chilling transformation it makes upon her. Also in typical Aronofsky style, the way that darkness manifests is visible in all its flinch-inducing weirdness and violence. It's not ongoing grossness, but rather two or so instances of shocking incidents that produced gasps from the audience as a whole. The ways the world warps from Nina's perspective, the unreliability of her perception, takes the film firmly into psychological thriller territory, and the director makes sure you're not sure what is real and what is in Nina's head.
I still find myself trying to decide where Nina's grip on reality begins to loosen up, where the spell of the ballet begins to mess with her head. It's fascinating and occasionally disturbing stuff, especially when the dark swan begins to emerge from Nina in uncomfortably tangible ways.
The movie is excellent, uncomfortable, fascinating. Portman and Hershey both give great performances. I want to see it again to take apart the threads of the story and try to pick out how and where Nina's world fractures and coalesces. One thing's for sure: it messes with her head, and ours. Definitely recommended but not, perhaps, for those with parent-child issues or for the squeamish (unless you're willing to close your eyes at one or two points in the film--which I did).
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Date: Mon, Dec. 13th, 2010 06:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Mon, Dec. 13th, 2010 09:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Mon, Dec. 13th, 2010 10:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Tue, Dec. 14th, 2010 01:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Tue, Dec. 14th, 2010 06:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Tue, Dec. 14th, 2010 04:03 pm (UTC)As for what Balanchine would have thought, certainly I'm curious about that (we'll never know), but overall I'm curious about how the ballet world in general is reacting because you can bet it's being discussed, partly because many ballet types were involved in the filmmaking in one way or another. I'd also like to be a fly on the wall to hear conversations about the general bitchiness of the women in the film. (The truth, of course, is that none of the characters in this movie are nice people. They're all damaged. They're all edged and cutting in one way or another, but that's what makes them so interesting.)
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Date: Tue, Dec. 14th, 2010 07:07 pm (UTC)