BLACK SWAN Discussion - Page 2

The reflections are interesting. The bird sound effects seem way too on the nose though.

Like I've mentioned, I'm seeing it again in two days, this time in a theater (I get screeners as a member of the OFCS, which is how I watched it the first time). Maybe my opinion will change.

Based on JuddL's comment I might revisit The Fountain, too, which I haven't seen since theaters. The one thing I will say, though is:

Even if you've been put in a situation where you have no control, you must think or feel something about it.

I agree. I think the movie, and Portman in particular, does its best to show that she feels afraid. She's afraid not only of failure, but of feeling anything because that would be tantamount to her admitting how miserable and trapped by her own life she is.

Aronofsky has again made yet another great film about self-destruction. I thought it was riveting. Apart from all the amazing performances, the photography was incredible; all those mirrors and the swirling, you-are-there ballet sequences were breathtaking.

Winona's final scene - Jeeesus!

On a baser note, I'm impressed how they managed to make the celebrated Portman/Kunis sex scene incredibly sexy and creepy at the same time, all without showing an ounce of actual nudity. Kudos.

In all of my skepticism I don't want to overlook how good this is. FUCKING TERRIFYING.

I found the film a bit overwhelming. My initial reaction was muted; through Renn's excellent review, the discussion here, and the friends I saw it with (which I'll get to momentarily), my admiration has grown. In the classic sense of the saying, I can't get the film out of my head.

I do feel it is absolutely a companion piece to The Wrestler, and I felt that way from the first sequence of Nina getting her shoes and feet ready. Where Randy the Ram lived in the gritty reality, this film lives in the mind of Nina. So much so, I was quickly able to pinpoint my initial challenge with the film...navigating the perspectives that the film throws at the viewer, almost continuously and without relief. It was very unsettling (which is the point, of course), and it sort of set me adrift. And as Tyler points out, detached from the protagonist.

In a sense, it works. There cannot be another perspective, because the film is completely in her head, and her life is completely in her art. The off-ramp, so to speak, is years ago in her life. I appreciated seeing this with a dear friend, who studied ballet from ages 4-17, and considerately answered my questions. She was about 20 pounds lighter, which amazes me, because she doesn't carry any spare weight around now (much like Natalie lost 25 pounds, and she started as a waif). She eventually left because she broke both her feet. I asked her about older ballet dancers, and she said many were crippled. There is tremendous beauty in that art, but the price (like professional wrestling) seems to be extraordinarily high. However, more importantly is the psychology of the company and the relationships. It is always about the part. And the person behind you.

Viewed through that prism, I think the film works very well (if also over the top and quite overt). It is dazzlingly intense. It was also quite sensual, and very unsettling (I might have said that already), and I think both represent is the artform.

I think Portman was incredible (as Rourke was before her, and Jackman before him), operating well out of her (or most actresses') comfort zone. She nailed it. The supporting cast was equally game, and provided effective and measured performances for the most part (histrionic when needed).

I'd love to see it again, because I think a second viewing would be very valuable in comprehending the structure and themes.

Exquisite filmmaking, as expected.

This is a film that lingers in your head. Be it visually and/or emotionally. I can't get some of those images out of my head, especially the scene of Winona impaling her cheek. Seriously, this may be one of the most terrifying non-horror movies I've seen. It crawls under your skin and I don't think it's been since The Wrestler that a movie so puts you in the head of its main character. This is truly the artist's tale; the one's who sacrifice themselves, quite literally, for greatness. For perfection. As she lay there dying at the end, the most sincere smile on her face, I could understand where she was coming from. A perfect moment, much like the very ending of The Wrestler, where Randy finally embraces all that he is.

Breathtaking filmmaking.

As with the last two posts, I, too, have Black Swan fever I cannot shake from my mind.

Specifically the second act of the ballet - the Black Swan performance - was so fucking enthralling I was literally breathless for a few moments.

It cannot be said enough how well this film is shot, the dance scenes put you in a state of trance. I would love to see the behind the scenes of how they choreographed an entire play with the cameraman basically a participant.

This is definitely a psychological horror film. Forced innocence slowly being stripped away at all angles. Natalie Portman should and will be recognized for this career best work.

I am now much more depressed that this new Wolverine is going to be a massive waste of time for such a supreme talent. But I will be there, no doubt.

Am I weird for thinking this film would make a great, thematic double feature with All That Jazz? One is within the musical genre, one within the psychological horror genre, both about dying for artistic perfection.

I remain the odd man out. Went to the theater to see it tonight (with an audience full of ballet dancers, no less -- the publicity team had invited a local ballet company to attend) and I still felt the same emotional distance from Nina I felt before. When I saw the trailer, I got the impression the movie was about an innocent girl being overwhelmed by pressure to the point of insanity or transformation, but for me, the film only offers a deeply obsessive person we barely know who gives into their worst impulses. This second time, it was somewhat more haunting in a grand, operatic sense, and I think I took away more from the dancing, but I still didn't feel directly emotionally engaged with what was happening. I might even have the same problem with the movie that Cassel has with Portman, which is that it's too thought out, too arranged. Aronofsky's endings usually hit the nail on the head a bit harder than necessary, but this is the one where I didn't feel a deep sadness about anything. I maintain that Nina gets exactly what she wants, and given what I know about her and her life, that's the best thing that could've happened.

What makes you so sure that's not the film's intent? Much like THE WRESTLER I think the ending of BLACK SWAN can be viewed as a triumph as much as a tragedy.

When Nina tells Andrew that the ending to Swan Lake is "beautiful", she's foreboding the movie's ending.

By the way, I dunno if it was just my theater, but everyone at my showing were laughing it up EVERY. SCENE. like it was a showing of Black Duck starring Tracy Jordan. It was REALLY irritating.

Aside from that, remember when the male dancer rushes past Portman right as she finishes the Black Swan dance and exclaims "Wow!!" to her? That's my review. AMAZING movie.

Hey, Tyler Foster, here's what you should do: Go to IKEA, eat a plate of meatballs, and on the way out buy yourself a spatula to go ass to ass on with an electrical outlet. May jolt you out of your contrarian funk!

I would like to think that, but I doubt it. I don't think there's enough evidence in the movie to call that ending a positive on Aronofsky's behalf. Um, okay.

Well I'm not saying it's a straight up happy ending, but just the same...

Why not? The way you described it is exactly what happens- she achieves what she's wanted throughout the film, which is to create passionate, powerful, beautiful art. She's destroying herself to do so, which is tragic, but she's sure as hell going out on a high note. Surely there's at least a little triumph in that, no? I don't know what else to tell you with regard to evidence from the movie to support that though, because I didn't really intellectualize that much when I saw it. It's simply what I felt, very viscerally, as the film reached its crescendo. An almost overwhelming mix of triumph and tragedy.

As I said earlier, I'm pretty much in line with Tyler on most of this, but I certainly did see the ending as darkly triumphant, from Nina's POV at least.

Saw it AGAIN today with some classmates from NYFA.

Anybody catch the random Mark Margolis cameo? I just checked to see if anybody else had noticed, and apparently his name's in the credits. Weird!

I thought I saw him in the crowd during Cassel's speech. They should've cast him as the train lecher.

Missed Mark the first time, but for some reason my eyes were drawn right to him the second time through.

After seeing the film, I'd have to agree with Z!? up there. There were a lot of similarities between The Wrestler and Black Swan, especially with how Aronofsky took the time to show what Randy and Nina were willing to put their bodies through during the prep scenes. Nina lived in a *gasp* sheltered life where nothing existed but her pretty princess ideals; it might as well have been an artificial womb. That's enough character establishment for me.

I definitely caught some Lynchian vibrations during the club's dance floor scene.

Vincent Cassell was great as the skeevy/driven director, and I'd like to see more complex roles like this.

Will be catching this again sometime during the weekend.

Side Note - Did anybody feel that the subway perv was a cameo from the same guy in Pi? I was holding back laughter during that part thinking about it.

This whole movie could be read as a criticism of Christopher Nolan's films, which makes it an interesting companion to Inception, since both films reveal a lot about how their directors approach their art.

And the ending is undoubtedly positive, if bittersweet. I think The Wrestler is a lot more ambiguous, but they both share the same ending. If you believe that achieving great art is an important and worthy goal for a human being to have, I think you have to have admiration for individuals who sacrifice to do that. Her life was built around the idea of achieving perfection as a dancer, and that's what she did.

That first time she starts to masturbate was a great moment. Portman really blew me away. Even reading all the praise from early reviews really didn't prepare me for how above and beyond the rest of her work this was.

Aronofsky's best. Loved it.

Nina achieves perfection. It is only a subjective tragedy. From her perspective (the only true perspective of the film) it's a happy ending.

The parallels to THE WRESTLER are many. It's a companion piece.

Black Swan's ending is happier The Wrestler, for ironic reasons. Nina lacks a figure like Tomei, who can offer her some form of a normal life. This would seem to make her story even sadder, but since Randy rejects it, it is actually all the more reason to have misgivings about his transcendent moment.

I also find it kind of funny that if you consider that the fighting is part of the show, Black Swan's climactic ballet is actually more violent than the The Wrestler's finale.

I've been thinking about it, and can we really say that she achieves perfection? She does fall, and even if it's the fault of the dancer holding her, it's still a blemish on the performance.

I would contend that the subsequent recovery and transcendent performance are, especially within the realm of the story, enough to overshadow and erase that flaw. It might even perhaps serve as contrast that enhances what comes after.

You could look at it as the imperfection that offsets the austerity of Nina's technical precision and gives the performance the life that Cassel was pushing for. Or you could view it as the final straw, and that she completely breaks from reality afterward, cutting herself and imagining some blazing, transformative performance and transcendent death as she bleeds out in her dressing room.

Personally, I dislike the whole "the ending is the character's fantasy" line of interpretation. It's become such a lazy way to have a "different" take on a film. But here you have to give it some weight; I don't think we're meant to believe that she was literally transmogrifying into bird during the second act and everyone just chose to ignore it in favor of the dance routine because they were so taken by it. So there's definitely something off there.

Is anyone actually arguing that she's a were-bird?

From the moment she takes the drugs (and even before that to a lesser extent), she becomes an unreliable narrator. I certainly didn't take the bird transformations to be literal, though the rash from which the feathers spring is real*, so there's some ambiguity, but not enough to think that she literally grows wings at the end.

And the movie goes at length to explain that "perfection" does not equal "without error".

*Something that is seen and identified by other people, in this case, her mom.

No, I just mean the "dying fantasy" view is supported in a way that it isn't with, say Let The Right One In. Slapping that kind of interpretation on the ending of any given movie is a peeve of mine, but the blatant subjectivity here demands that it be considered.

Although, much as I enjoyed the film, I would definitely be back for multiple viewings if it were actually about Natalie Portman as a bicurious were-bird.

Yeah, I wasn't suggesting that she literally turns into a bird or that the end of the film was her dying fantasy while she lays in a pool of blood, I was just wondering what Aronofsky was doing by having her fall during the performance. Perhaps that was the thing that finally let her let go of herself and give into the darker side she needed to tap into in order to become the black swan. But then, technically her overall performance is blemished. It was just an interesting concept to me.

Yep.

I also loved that first masturbation scene. It wasn't until then that I realized that Vincent Cassel wasn't merely a lecherous creep, but legitimately trying to get her to know what it's like to be out of control. With some of the things he has put actresses through on-screen (both in this movie and in Requiem) I wonder if there's any of Aronofsky in Cassel's character.

The one thing I wasn't a huge fan of was the overuse of the mirror imagery. At a certain point it almost became laughable how every scene had to have a mirror.

I'm not really sure how you could film a movie about ballet/dance without mirrors.

The whole point is to deconstruct yourself and your performance. It fit well for me that that would transfer to her 'life' outside of work.

Absolutely. But it felt like 80% of the shots had the characters reflected in mirrors, I'm not just talking about rehearsal scenes. I get the symbolism and appreciate how it was done, but in the end, I think it was too much. A minor quibble to be sure.

Is that perhaps that she, at a certain point, wasn't able to differentiate between the two?

As an unreliable narrator it's definitely a conscious choice to include them and since we generally get that claustrophobic point-of-view that's the point.

That's how she sees herself and others. It's obvious, but still important.

I mean, if you can say it's a minor quibble, cool. Worked for me though.

Drove 200+ miles to Atlanta to see this last night. Loved it. I'd still put Inception at best film of the year, but this is a close second. I saw it with a packed theater that ate up every minute. Almost complete silence except for appropriate laughter for Cassell's line about feeling the black swan emerge last night (when Nina bit him) and lots of groans (some from me) at the gory stuff. Oh and one girl screamed really loud when Winona grabbed Nina's hand at the hospital. It was great.

The scene towards the end when Nina is dancing the black swan transformation and is growing feathers is so fucking powerful. Really loved the genre melding as well as others have noted. Definitely my favorite film of Aronofsky's, barely beating out The Fountain.

Almost this whole movie could play out without dialog without missing anything, just like a ballet. I love that.

Expanding more on The Wrestler/Black Swan comparison. It's fascinating how inversely parallel they are.

The main characters performing acts, ballet vs. wrestling; struggling to compete, one at the top of their game vs. the other floundering at the bottom; against differing competitors, cutthroat ballerinas vs. friendly wrestlers. Those surrounding Nina are terrorizing her against her will while those around Randy the Ram are trying to elevate him against his self-inflicting collapse.

And they end exactly the same, with a dramatic dive to the death, but induce completely opposite emotional tragedies - one a feeling of success and perfection, and the other, of utter despair.

Fuck Wolverine again.

With the mirrors I really felt like Aronofsky was trying to make the audience comfortable with the views of the world through Nina's eyes, as she is surrounded by mirrors. That way when her mind begins to betray her, her reflection begins to betray her as well (when the reflections are delayed/moving on their own etc). I also think that some of the other characters were meant to be figurative mirrors of Nina. Kunis' character was the mirror of the dark wild side of Nina that was struggling to emerge, and Ryder's character was the reflection of Nina's future, broken and forgotten. It gives her desire for perfection, passion, and ultimately death a little more context.

Again, I agree, but it feels like 80% of the film has goddamned mirrors. It felt like a bit much. But the only reason I even brought it up in the first place was to point out how the only complaint I have against the film is minor.

I like how this and The Wrestler both view artistic achievement as it's own reward. A performance is something that exists for a moment in time and that's it. It's not like she's leaving behind a record or a film or something that will live on forever and achieve her notoriety. But Aronofsky seems to suggest that just getting there, and achieving at a level most humans will never meet, is in itself a worthy reward, and I really like that about the film.

When Nina is laying there at the end, and Cassell comes up and calls her "My Little Princess", did they change her face out with Winona's or was that my imagination?

I would say 80% of the world has mirrors/reflective surfaces.

I don't know what you're trying to say here.

Sorry, I'm being a dumb/smartass. But in a film that's all about perception of one's self, I understand the need for the mirrors. I do understand what you're saying though, they are everywhere. Aronofsky has always kinda layed it on thick with his symbolism, always been a little too on the nose. It's a valid criticism. It didn't really hurt this film though, in my opinion.

Loved the movie. Saw it at Fox Tower where it was playing on 3 screens and every showing was packed, if not sold out (according to the ticket guy anyway).

Anyone else feel a shit ton of backlash about to happen, though?

Can the backlash wait till it comes out in the uncivilized lands so I can see it? I don't want to drive 200 miles to Nashville or Atlanta.

oh yea, people have no idea what they're getting themselves into.

Its worth it.

What with the body weirdness and the presence of Vincent Cassel, I couldn't help thinking Cronenberg could've done this better.

Basically, as others have said, it's Aronofsky's Cronenberg/Lynch movie, which had the effect of making me wish I was watching a Cronenberg or Lynch movie instead. Didn't hate it, but I prefer Aronofsky's more original films.

Heh, my parents said they were interested in seeing it. I gave them some vague warnings of the "I don't really think you'd like it" variety but, well, we'll see how it goes. Though I'm afraid their attitude will be indicative of the rest of the country's, as well as the Academy's. Personally, I'd like to see the movie (and Aronofsky) get as much recognition as possible and I don't think that's going to happen when people go in expecting "ballet movie" and getting lesbians and face stabbings instead.

WHAT THE FUCK, FUCK YOU FUCKING BACKLASH MOTHERFUCKER

In all honesty, though, this felt like an Aronofsky movie through and through. It's got the camera-work of The Wrestler, the visceral breaking down of the body of Requiem For A Dream and, like all of his films (except maybe Requiem), it's about the main character pushing themselves to great lengths to achieve great things, and the toll it takes on them. Unlike a Cronenberg movie, it's warm and has a genuine concern about the characters. Unlike a Lynch movie, the flourishes of the surreal and dream-like are in service of the story and characters, instead of the other way around. There are certainly influences (though I don't see too much Lynch in this) but it never felt like he was trying to imitate them.

More than anything, it feels more like the ultimate culmination of Aronofsky's work before. And to that end, I now submit to you all that the shot of Nina underwater is a Below reference. Anything to serve my thesis.

The movie is what it is; nothing can be done about mainstream reception. Portman's performance is too undeniable for the film to be completely ignored over the winter, anyway.

Edit: Lynch and Cronenberg would have made different movies entirely. Lynch is often inscrutable; Cronenberg is detached. The film's Aronofsky-ness is its earnestness.