Black Swan

[picolas]

spoils

The visual visceral aspect of the film helps to extend out to a possible incest theme within the story. It has to do with Portman and her mother.

Since Portman's character is delusional  and the camera feeds through her psyche, a moving storyline within the film is the possible incest with her mother. They interact in weird ways where Portman doesn't seem to have a comfortable sexual history with anyone and she will suck her mother's finger for a slab of icing from a cake. When Portman believes she had sex with Mila Kunis, she finds out she was mistaken, but who did she fantasize with? Was it a mere dream? Evidence suggests it could have been sex with her mother because the piece of wood she used to keep her door shut was removed when Portman woke up and rushed out. There had to have been someone there for it to have moved like it did. Her mother looked sullen when she was leaving, but she could have been looking that way for a host of reasons. Either way, the enclosed world between her and her mother is everywhere in the film. The possibilities of deeper issues and things are flavors for a visceral take on a general taboo story.

this reminds me of another thing i disliked: the sheer amount of missed opportunities to expand the character. i like your theory, but it's basically unexplored within the movie. yes she's crazily sexually repressed, but WHY?? why does it have to be such a big secret?? the masturbation scene was one of the most intriguing, like she'd never done it before, but that whole virginal undercurrent is left hanging in the wind. so much is left as a giant question mark. and i think the movie takes pride in leaving these questions so underdeveloped. i'm all for ambiguity but not when it's less interesting than going deeper.

i'd reiterate the lack of humour too. nina neeeeds to be laughed at, parodied etc. for her ridiculousness, but the movie never takes advantage and stays almost 100% self-serious.

alexandro-

i don't think there's any ambiguity about her actually dying.

you raise a good point about the wrestler. and tragedies in general. why does predictability work for some things and not others? it probably has to do with the richness of the characters and their flaws. nina is flat and intentionally vague as a character. rourke is actively trying to change his life throughout the film but can't escape the only thing he knows how to do.. his personality is hardwired into a lost time. maybe it's the character's level of active thought. i don't think nina is a particularly smart or self-aware character. (i have to go into shakespeare land right now cause i'm getting immersed in this stuff at school) you can write books about hamlet because his character is so expansive and philosophically detailed, and he tries and fails repeatedly at a clear goal established early in the play, but you watch because he's so effing compelling, smart, witty etc... how can such a keenly intelligent character fail so hard? we know what will happen in romeo + juliet within a minute. it's spoken aloud. but there's always that lingering possibility that maybe one chain in the elaborate sequence of tragedy won't happen this time... there's always a flicker of hope because it's such a pure expression of love that we need to believe it'll be different this time. black swan is about ignorance of the self, repression on many levels etc. which can be a rich subject, but it's like a children's drawing of that. it's bright, colourful, weird, but flat as paper.

[Gold Trumpet]

this reminds me of another thing i disliked: the sheer amount of missed opportunities to expand the character. i like your theory, but it's basically unexplored within the movie. yes she's crazily sexually repressed, but WHY?? why does it have to be such a big secret?? the masturbation scene was one of the most intriguing, like she'd never done it before, but that whole virginal undercurrent is left hanging in the wind. so much is left as a giant question mark. and i think the movie takes pride in leaving these questions so underdeveloped. i'm all for ambiguity but not when it's less interesting than going deeper.

We are quickly going to get to a territory where it's agree to disagree because I know there are some movies where I'm feeling the same way as you are and I feel my complaints about it not doing enough are justified.

For me, the reason why I don't think it could have gone further is because it wanted to be a tight thriller like that. Like Vincent Cassel says when he is talking about with what he wants with Swan Lake, a "stripped down, raw" show. The film focuses on a style and structure before anything else. It wants to elude to all of its themes with production details in the film. It reminds me of how Stanley Kubrick approached things in the later part of his career. He disregards the obvious methods to extend the story out and hid all the major theme indicators within small production details within the film. Some people may believe he does enough because compared to a film like Black Swan, there is more story in all of his films. However, I think those films are oriented in trying to be visceral experiences where you start to see the themes bleed out afterward in small pockets of the story. The films never do fulfill in full discussion of the themes because they are just alluded to in obscure ways.

Still, no big deal with just disagreeing. I would like to continue the conversation further because I think there are more production details within the film that point to the themes I was talking about, but it's an ongoing discussion.

[Ravi]

SPOILERS

this reminds me of another thing i disliked: the sheer amount of missed opportunities to expand the character. i like your theory, but it's basically unexplored within the movie. yes she's crazily sexually repressed, but WHY?? why does it have to be such a big secret?? the masturbation scene was one of the most intriguing, like she'd never done it before, but that whole virginal undercurrent is left hanging in the wind. so much is left as a giant question mark. and i think the movie takes pride in leaving these questions so underdeveloped. i'm all for ambiguity but not when it's less interesting than going deeper.

Nina's mother has been keeping her under her thumb forever.  She wants Nina to be her little daughter forever.  Even her room looks like a child's room.  I think the idea was that her blossoming as an artist would come with her maturing as a person.

I saw this forever ago but haven't written anything about it until now.  I admired aspects of the film more than I liked the film as a whole.  The treatment was so archetypal and surface level that I felt like I got everything I needed to out of my first viewing of it, and that there wasn't much a second viewing could reveal to me.  I guess that's what melodrama is.  Immediately recognizable themes, story arcs, and character types.  I'm fine with melodrama, but for the most part I was distant from the film.  I totally recognized aspects of Nina in myself and people I know, and yet I felt disconnected from the film.  Melodrama should carry the audience along for the ride before they're aware of how all the elements are falling into place.

it just kinda unfolds exactly how you think it will.

[pete]

"why" she's sexually repressed?
I didn't care and the movie's missed nothing by not giving it a clear answer.

[picolas]

by all means, gt. i want to know what other clues you're finding. we're definitely getting into super subjective territory. how much stuff do we need to feel satisfied with a movie? there's no technical answer.. it just happens or it doesn't. i think the reason why it doesn't for me is because nina doesn't feel like a complete character.

pete, i cared. i don't need an encyclopedic backstory, just more than what i saw. i recognize there are tons of brilliant characters that are never given any kind of context. i mentioned that in my first review. an explanation for where anton chigurh came from would mess him up. darth vader etc... so, alright.. maybe i didn't need an explanation from the past. maybe i just needed nina to be more interesting in the present. i pretty much always felt one step ahead of her.

[Stefen]

I thought the mother was pretty much the only semi-good character in the movie. Good as in means well. The rest of the characters are just slimy, awful people. I think Nina's problems started WAY before the movie begins. Her mother seemed to be the only one who could keep her in check and when she lands the big role, it's too much, Nina can't handle it. Most everything was in Nina's mind because she's a headcase so I came to the conclusion that most of the mother issues were as well.

[Alexandro]

I think what's important is that the film never hides it's campy intentions or it's archetypes, and what the filmmakers are able to do with them.

I don't know about the backstory issues you have. Never bothered me, in fact I like that we don't get any. But I would never connect Nina to a character like Chigurgh in a million years. Plainview maybe, granted that it's way more richer as a character than Nina was ever intended to be. The real character work comes from Portman and how she breathes life into this non-person. I gues subsequent viewings will make all of us appreciate her work here more.

I also don't understand why she needs to be mocked beyond the obvious. Everyone pretty much mocks her any chance they get, even her mother unintentionally. What the film does wonderfully is make you feel her insecurity and awkwardness about it. She doesn't take it lightly, so why should we?

Anyway, I think just this discussion between you, GT, me and all the others is starting to reveal that there are enough interpretations for everything in the movie and that makes it rewatchable and I would say a little more rich than just a simplistic thriller.

[squints]

BEST MOVIE OF THE YEAR!


end of discussion.

[cinemanarchist]

Scarfie strikes again!!

[polkablues]

He's just trolling us now.

[Gold Trumpet]

We need a Darren Aronofsky w/scarf bobblehead on the main page by the Xixax Feature sign. It's been a while since we added something like that for a temporary period of time.

[Pas]

We need a Darren Aronofsky w/scarf bobblehead on the main page by the Xixax Feature sign. It's been a while since we added something like that for a temporary period of time.

Between this and the drunkpostathon idea yesterday, we might be entering a golden age!!

[cronopio 2]

spoils
i'm stunned by how overrated this insanely predictable movie has become. where was this adoring general public when the wrestler happened?

i love you picolas.


i couldn't believe how disrespectfully predictable it was, how similar it was to the wrestler, and how unappealing ballet still is to me.
still, i've never cared about wrestling but the wrestler made that world interesting.

if this had been a shyamalan movie, we would all be in awe, i think. i can't be blamed for expecting way more from a director who's made versatility his trademark.

[pete]

I see entirely the opposite. the wrestler was the predictable one (maybe the trailer had something to do with it) and this, while not exactly strong in the plot department, was much more immersive and beautifully shot.

[children with angels]

I see entirely the opposite. the wrestler was the predictable one (maybe the trailer had something to do with it) and this, while not exactly strong in the plot department, was much more immersive and beautifully shot.

^ For serious. Plus, I just don't get the accusations of 'predictability' or 'obviousness' when we're talking about this movie - it seems to me that the film doesn't try to be anything else than powerfully blatant in virtually all aspects. Allow me to repost something I wrote elsewhere:

(Spoils, though I doubt anyone who hadn't seen the film would want to read this anyway...)


By and large, people who dislike this film seem to think that it takes itself more seriously than it should - that is, they believe it sees itself as 'art' rather than a simple, melodramatic, slightly sleazy genre picture. Those who love it, on the other hand, tend to appreciate it either precisely because it revels in 'lowbrow' pleasures, or because the fact that it's so hysterically camped-up means it avoids attempting an entirely straight face. I count myself a member of the latter group, albeit with a few caveats.

A little like Blue Valentine (2010), it seems to me that elements of this film's style and context can lure us into expecting something that the film ultimately isn't interested in delivering. Aronofsky's status as an indie auteur, the high art milieu of ballet, the classical score - all these things can encourage the feeling that the movie is itself aiming to be something of an arthouse picture.

In one way, this sense is increased by all the symbolism on show in the sets, costume, and plot. But let's look at what kind of symbolism this is exactly. Most ostentatiously, there are mirrors everywhere in this movie: they make dramatic sense in the ballet school, but Nina and her mother's apartment also seems festooned with them. There's the fact that Nina constantly wears white even outside rehearsals, while the ironically-named Lily wears black. Indeed, Nina even wears a feathery white scarf. There are the excess of toys in Nina's room, the swan that sits by her bath, her ringtone being a piece from Swan Lake, the black dragon-like wings on Lily's back and the fact that Nina keeps scratching in the same spot on her shoulders, the overall interest in doppelgangers, and so on and so forth.

If all these things were intended to be clever - things that an astute viewer could applaud themselves for picking up on - then this would be a hilariously obvious arthouse movie. L. A. Times critic Kenneth Turan is one who has complained about unsubtlety, adding contemptuously that "expecting subtlety from a Darren Aronofsky film is like expecting Pixar to announce a slasher movie". This entirely misses the point, however, that a lack of subtlety is exactly what this film requires, and strives for. This is because this isn't a work of "high-art trash", as Turan calls it, but rather what we might choose to call a 'trashy' movie that just happens to take place in the world of high art, and is made by an auteur.

Every single one of Black Swan's themes is not so much developed or hinted at, as might happen in an arthouse movie, but explicitly stated, repeated, and insisted upon. It quickly becomes clear that, for example, the mirrors are not being used as a visual motif that symbolically suggest split personality, but rather as devices that openly express that split personality: Nina's mirror-image becomes detached from her own, and she eventually uses a shard of mirror to stab Lily. The central themes of duality and the pursuit of artistic perfection are not things we are expected to somehow work out, but things we are told about: within the first twenty minutes Thomas has laid out the hardly complicated white/black swan dichotomy, and Nina has said that she just wants to be "perfect". The remainder of the film proceeds to work through these themes brazenly, using the plot of the ballet as a guide (which, again, is helpfully synopsized for us in the opening), until they lead to the movie's wholly unavoidable conclusion. So much for subtlety.

To criticize the movie for being obvious or lacking depth, though, is to ignore the fact that the very obviousness of all the symbolism is wholly fitting for Black Swan, which never hopes to be anything other than an archetypal story combined out of various different genres: fairytale, horror, melodrama, and so on. All these types of stories contain symbolism, but it is symbolism of a particular kind - a direct, visceral sort of symbolism which the reader or viewer could never be expected to struggle to see, but is instead offered to us fully-formed: the link between sex and death offered by vampires, say. It is only possible to accuse this film of being shallow if you hope that it will convey something 'deep', and by this we usually mean something that is not immediately obvious - something a viewer can pat themselves on the back for discovering.

David Lynch, say, may invoke horror or film noir, but he isn't finally making movies in these genres - he makes arthouse films which use genres. Their symbolism is thus made diffuse, ambiguous, and thus easily understood as 'art'. Aronofsky's film, on the other hand, doesn't just employ genres - it embodies them, and its style of symbolism is thus horror film or fairytale symbolism, which are altogether different prospects. Neither approach is better or worse than the other, but it is important to gauge which we are dealing with, or we may end up looking at a film through the wrong lens. A measure of just how to-the-point Black Swan is interested in being is that its end credits list Portman's role as Nina/White Swan, and Kunis' as Lily/Black swan. This is a film entirely unconcerned with ambiguity.

A more appropriate comparison for the movie might be something like the excellent little 2007 horror flick, Teeth, which is about a young, abstinent teenage Christian girl who discovers she possess vagina dentata; gory sex scenes ensue. There is nothing subtle about this: we don't interpret a metaphor, but rather see it played out - openly and powerfully. Black Swan works on similar levels. Its concerns are uncomplicatedly primitive, and its means of conveying them are thus similarly unadorned. Sexual repression is expressed in Nina's white costumes and piles of toys; the need to become both the extremes demanded by Thomas is literalised in Lily actually becoming Nina; the sick emphasis placed on physical beauty is played out in multiple scenes of applying make-up and Beth stabbing herself in the face; and, of course, there is the basic fact that Nina doesn't just transform herself figuratively, but via actual metamorphosis.

As with any film, this movie's achievement lies not in its meanings but in the way it makes its meanings. Black Swan does what it sets out to do extremely well. Some clearly wished that it had attempted something different and judged it a failure on these terms. Others have recognized the simplicity of the film's basic elements but still suggested that it somehow manages to exceed them: for instance, Manohla Dargis speaks in the New York Times of "those clichés, which Aronofsky embraces, exploits and, by a squeak, finally transcends". Yet there is no need to transcend a cliché if it is conveyed with such impressive force.

At bottom, this is exactly what it seems: a blunt and beautiful story of a woman pushed to insanity by unrealistic and dangerous demands: to be both a 'perfect' artist and, in the process, the 'perfect' embodiment of an age-old virgin/whore dichotomy. That is all, and it's more than enough. Neither original nor complicated in conception, this project is executed in practice with a power and flare that is no less valuable for being direct. To ask for anything else is to desire to watch a different kind of movie.