Black Swan

[picolas]

i hate to break this to everyone but curb your enthusiasm.

the good: this is clearly an aronofsky film. it has the care, the visual inventiveness, the terrific blocking etc. and it's incredibly visceral. your stomach will churn/get flipped upside down.

unfortunately, as an artistic statement, it falls short.

*incredibly vague, quasi-spoils. just talking about the overall shape of the film*

i think aronofsky overrates simplicity. at the time of the wrestler he was still saying he believed the fountain was his best, which it so isn't. and i've absolutely warmed up to it since my initial, painful reaction, but still, it suffers from its straightforwardness/overall obviousness. black swan isn't too different. everyone has a clear, defined role. the story has a fairly obvious arc to it, and nothing really happens beyond what you will probably guess. there are hints of a more interesting movie strewn throughout, but they are left vague. i think there's a movement right now towards characters without backstories, and it works for no country/blood, but that's because those characters represent something greater. giving them details would undermine their symbolism. in black swan, the lack of detail in portman's character only felt to me like a lost opportunity. btw, portman is really great and could not have done a better job with the material. vincent cassell, on the other hand, is clearrrly miscast. i'm very surprised aronofsky let a lot of his readings through, as it's clear english is not his first language, and about 70% of what he says just doesn't sound like how someone would actually talk. it's akin to saito in inception. he just can't speak english properly. i get that he's a french artistic director, but that's not an excuse for such weird/unintelligible timing.

as a 'companion' to the wrestler, it's very clear which film is superior. it's also clear where all the humour went. portman's character is fairly ridiculous and the closest we get to someone exposing that is kunis, but that's not close enough. the audience was laughing at moments that were definitely not supposed to be funny (at least not lol funny) because they were hungry for something to balance portman's pomposity. the film utterly lacks what the wrestler had in spades: the ability to jump between seriousness and hilarity. i'm not saying black swan needed to be as funny as the wrestler, but nothing this simple should be this self-serious.

*real spoils*

the ending has a nice degree of ambiguity to it, but coming on the heels of the wrestler, it feels unoriginal and uninspired. almost like going through the tragic motions. i would have been a lot more impressed if portman hadn't died, and achieved not only a great performance, but her own independence and character. i think it would have put a great spin on the movie as a whole, capturing the idea that great artists have to go through hell to make real art, and that sometimes people need to go through seriously fucked up periods to feel normal again. it would be a great emotional twist, since the movie paints her experience as fairly negative, but objectively she is finally coming to grips with who she is, and what she's been hiding from the world.

also, the final transformation into the swan is pretty effing anticlimactic. it just happens. cg's okay.

[Sleepless]

Austinites, it's going to be at AFF

[matt35mm]

Wow, lots of great stuff will be at AFF!  Meek's Cutoff!  127 Hours!  Blue Valentine!  ... a Japanese remake of Sideways called Sideways!

Excited!

[socketlevel]

i haven't seen 127 hours, but a friend did at TIFF. he is a very level headed guy, and he totally lost his shit over it.

[quigliest]

Check out four of the coolest posters your likely to see in a while.

[SiliasRuby]

MM MMMM Good!

[Gamblour.]

Um holy fuck

[The Perineum Falcon]

Yes! Those look like proper movie posters!

[Pas]

So where do we buy tht?

[modage]

This was great.  Natalie Portman will never in her life get a role as good as this one again.  It's just a complete showcase and she is amazing.  More later/soon.

[Ravi]

[ono]

That movie is a great poster.

[modage]

from my blog:

It's crazy to think that I've been a Darren Aronofsky fan for a decade now.  I saw Requiem For A Dream in Philadelphia on opening night in 2000 and was blown away.  In 2006 I caught a CMJ advance screening of The Fountain and 2 years later attended the NYFF premiere of The Wrestler.  After the perceived failure of The Fountain, (a film I love), I see the need for him to hit reset on his career, which The Wrestler did brilliantly.  It wasn't as meticulously shot as his previous films and it was also the first script he didn't have a hand in writing.  But The Wrestler, though his most critically acclaimed film, was the only disappointment for me.  It was a good film built around Mickey Rourke's performance, but missing that crazy ambition present in all Aronofsky's other films.

Well that crazy ambition is back in Black Swan.  Stylistically it's the best of both worlds. His regular DP Matthrew Libatique is back (after sitting out The Wrestler), mixing that film's looser style with the camera acrobatics of their earlier collaborations.  The singular performer in this film is Natalie Portman, gives the performance in her career.  She's in almost every shot and for 90% of the film the camera is never more than a few feet from her face.  I can't imagine she'll ever get a role as great as this one again, something that allows her to transform herself physically and emotionally.  It's pretty incredible.  Some complaints have been lobbed at the film for being too melodramatic but it is a melodrama that builds to a thrilling climax.  I loved the film but it's not going to be for everyone.

[samsong]

aronofsky's lesser qualities that i thought he rid himself of to his benefit in the wrestler are back in full, dubious force here.  as well executed as black swan is, it's all mood with no discernible purpose other than shock value.  it's an elegant-looking but thoroughly cheap amalgamation of repulsion and carrie (with ballet!), from which neither aronofsky nor his writer(s) learned that there's more to achieving character psychology through the macabre than insane visuals and disconcerting sound design.  it doesn't hold much (or any) water in the way of interesting, developed insight to take anything remotely valuable from, nor is it enough of a trip to sustain an entire viewing as a sensory overload.  and jesus does it get redundant.  in the end it's all pretty tepid.

natalie portman's performance reminded me of charlotte gainsbourg's in antichrist, a visceral display of range for an unworthy film. 

[picolas]

THANK YOU.

no one is saying this!!!!