Okay so I just watched Black Swan with my family. This movie is a tumultuous little ride of emotion, at times it can seem like a cheap/bad horror movie at other times, a well made "psycho-sexual thriller" (what does that even mean, and why is everyone so addicted to saying it?) For those of you who have been living under a stupid rock, this movie is about a ballerina, Natalie Portman, who desperately wants to be featured more in the ballet company she is in. When the new production of Swan Lake is announced she of course wants the role of the Swan Princess, but according to the head of the company, Tomas, she lacks the duality and sexuality needed to dance the role of the black swan, as well as the white.
Between her crazy overbearing and potentially sexually abusive (?) mother (Barbara Hershey) and the new sexy young thang in the company, (Mila Kunis) Nina (Portman) has a verifiable cornucopia of choices for her night plans; stay in getting her nails clipped rather bloodily, eating cake and scratching herself while her mom paints endless portraits of her and lives vicariously through her, or go out, do ecstasy, make out with a few guys in a sheer black tank top and eventually have an intense lesbian sex scene.
But not only does Nina not know if she is a lesbian, she doesn't know if she's crazy either! Throughout the film she continues to see copies of herself walking around. However if I looked like Natalie Portman, I would want to see myself everywhere too, so I don't know if that really verifies that she's crazy.
Winona Ryder sneaks her way into this film as a jilted "little princess," the last favorite of Tomas, until she gets too old and has to be cast aside, as is the way in the cutthroat world of surrealist ballet, as we all know. She also gets hit by a car (accidentally intentionally or pushed, we never find out) but of the couple times Nina visits her in the hospital, during one, she shoves a nail file into her face repeatedly, so look forward to that.
This film really is great, Aronofsky has proven himself time and time again to be a storyteller of great vision, especially for the very corporeal subsets of society (drug addicts in Requiem, wrestlers in The Wrestler, and cancer patients in The Fountain) which now includes ballerinas. I'm looking forward to his next film about circus performers, because I feel like it's coming.
julie, i finally saw this last night! i cant stop thinking about it. i think it is the first honest portrayal of attempting to show (and successfully doing so) the sexual curiosity and drive of a young woman. but that of course was only one layer of the cinematic onion. i love when movies have seemingly obvious themes/metaphors (such as, the white/black swan, and tomas often wearing gray, etc.) but have a much deeper complexity. its different for me than movies such as inception, where you have no clue what the fuck is going on and the internet has like 25 fucking venn diagrams of possible meanings, like there IS a meaning, some 'game' to figure out..if you catch my drift. i love black swan because i feel there is no answer, it is what it is, and what you make of it (as corny as that sounds.) i cant wait to see it again!
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ps love the posts btw! keep writing
--pps i didnt get the mom being a sexual abuser...?
ReplyDeletealso, sorry not to compare it to inception again, but i think the success of this movie (and probable future academy awards) show that a GREAT movie doesnt have to enter any other realm for discovery, the human mind is still a force that can be explored and tampered with, there is still space in cinema for imagination to continue its efforts to explain the human condition, with all of our stresses and psychoses ......or something.
ReplyDeletekaaaattteeee- love the comments keep'em coming! I agree with you about the last thing you said about the exploration of the human mind, for obvious reasons I think these are the movies that resonate most with audiences.
ReplyDeleteThe sexual thing with the mom was an inference on my part only and was never explicitly stated, I just felt like there were undertones, like when she's in her room watching her sleep, and when she demands she take her shirt off and that she obsessively paints pictures of her, etc. I don't think she abuses her, I just think she thinks about her in a covetous way that COULD be sexual. who knows- no meaning right?
also I agree with you about the honest portrayal, the scene where she masturbates was so well done, I was shocked honestly. Also women are not on some weighted scale of virgin or seductive temptress, there are if you'll allow the pun, many shades of gray
Swan QUEEN, not Swan Princess. Duh, Julie.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I cannot believe you didn't mention the obvious parallels between Black Swan and Center Stage.
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