Black Swan

[skull_bearer]

Okay, first of all i have to admit that this film and I got off on the wrong foot. I saw a crappy short trailer of it that made me think this was a rags to riches dream come true blah blah blah sort of film, and only later realised it was a harrowing, body horror, mindfuck, very pretty brainscar-a-thon. Of course, when I realised that, I went to paramour and said "We are seeing that. Now."

So we did.

My first thought on exiting the film was that it seemed to have been put together by the RSPBD, or Royal Society for the Protection of Ballet Dancers. Everything seemed to be screaming "Everytime you go to watch a ballet, you are contributing to this." Like how PETA makes films about saving sea kittens and Michael Moore makes them about how being American is shit.
Seriously, if you have a young daughter who wants to be a ballet dancer and you want to put her off, take her to see this film. I'm serious, the entire premise is how ballet can screw someone up, and that's not even going into the torn tendons, slipped discs, and other IRL horror stories.

Anyway, besides the odd sense I was watching a documentary about how ballet is evil, the film was gold. I throroughly enjoyed it (which is the main point); the characters were interesting, the plot was weird and bizarre, the dancing was gorgeous and the music was deafening. The relationship between the ballet dancer and the mother was so horrifyingly dysfunctional while still being based in love that I was clinging to Paramour through most of it (I have issues, ok? And I was watching it with Mirek, which made it worse).

All the characters were fascinating, particularly the rival dancer, whose role was so deliciously ambiguous that you are never sure if she is just a jealous, passive-aggressive but still decent person who does by the end really want to be friends with the main character, or if she was really trying to sabotage her career. I lean more towards the first, which brings me to the main character.

She was really great. Massive kudos for Natalie Portman for pulling it off, ballet dancing it insanely hard work and to pull off a staggering preformance of Swan Lake is hard enough for a professional balletrina, let alone an actress playing a role. I also like that as an actress she really is the White Swan, so the audience is wondering, along with the ballet director, whether she can pull off the Black Swan. She plays the first half of the film very much like Evie in V for Vendetta, and it's a shock to see her break out of the role in the second half and pull off a magnificent preformance. I also like the character as well, its the virginal pure dancer with some serious issues and massive flaws. She's neurotic, she's way too controlled, she's downright unfriendly to most of the other characters. We can see what she's that way, and the other characters react to these flaws. It's damn good.

Paramour and I had a disagreement about the ballet director. Paramour said he could see his point of view in seducing the main character, being as she is the best for the role, but cannot pull off the Black Swan, and than in teaching her sensuality it allows her to pull off the role. I said WTF no way the guy's a sleazebag who was abusing his position of power to get it off with someone who can't say no. I don't know, I think this might be a male/female issue as well as a No Way Personal Nightmare for me.

The dancing was... I don't know enough ballet to judge, but the final act, in which the main character dances the Black Swan, was absolutely fucking amazing and blew me right out of my seat. I mean, wow.

The plot was... actually very slightly disappointing. Now, this is my own damn problem, but I was expecting something a bit like Pan's Labyrinth, in which its completely uncertain whether what is happening is in the character's head, or if it's real. In Black Swan it's pretty obvious from a fairly early point that the character is basically cracking up. In Pan's Labyrinth it makes no sense for the magic to be real, and no sense for it not to be real. In Black Swan it's made fairly clear it's not real, as no one but the main character sees these things.
Now, although I was somewhat disappointed in this, it was done brilliantly, and it was never clear whether what we were seeing was real, or just the character hallucinating. There's a scene at the end where the main character believes she's murdered her rival, and up until the revelation no one knows if it's real or not.
Something else this reminded me of was Shutter Island, which has a similar 'is it in their heads?' premise. The difference there is that Shutter Island deliberately plays on expected tropes to make the audience believe the plot is heading in one direction, before switching rails. I actually went against this just to be contrary and was stunned to be proved right (mostly, the film is less ambiguous than the book but it's still open-ended). Black Swan does not play on tropes and the audience is not given any reason to believe the main character is actually turning into a swan. Which is a shame, as it would have added another layer to the whole mindfuck aspect.

But that's just me being hideously picky. The acting was amazing, the plot was solid, the transformation scenes had me curling in my seat trying not to look, the dacing was stunning and the music was, as I said, deafening. It reminds me of that tiny tunes cartoon where they're in the cinema and that's the whole 'dolby digital sound' ad, and a booming voice saying 'the audience is now deaf'. I'm pretty sure some people's hearing aids overloaded during the final instrumental roar. I loved it, I'll probably see it again. Thoroughly reccomended.

Comments

[shadowvalkyrie.livejournal.com]

I haven't see it (yet), so I'm not reading the spoilery part, but my initial misconception (and not only mine) was similar:
Roommate: "You coming along to the cinema tonight?"
SV: "What are you watching?"
Roommate: "Black Swan -- it's this ballet movie."
SV: "... Yeah, I'll give that one a miss."

Since my friends were huddled up in trauma afterwards, I decided I should have gone, after all, because I would have been the only one who liked it.

[shadowvalkyrie.livejournal.com]

seen, even

[skull-bearer.livejournal.com]

I think you would have liked it, it's mindfuck central.

[delkaetre-ni.livejournal.com]

If you know anyone who does ballet, see it with them - they'll see all the little things that a layman won't. Gent and I saw it with our neighbour, a former ballet dancer - as a dancer, he can spot every single instance where Portman's body double does the actual dancing, every little inconsequential habit that's actually part of the Ritual dancers develop around their roles, etc. He does admit that even with the use of a double for the actual dancing, Portman did well to accurately pick up the posture, movements and very particular physical tics that identify dancers. She spent a full year in training for the role.

[deborahkla.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen it yet, either, but I've read a few dancers' assessments of it, and my sister is a former member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Troupe, so I've had years of exposure to dance in every possible form. I'm imagining I'll see it with different eyes than most people. I'm still a bit of a skeptic, but I'll reserve my judgment until I see it.

[edsigma.livejournal.com]

Pretty good movie, hope it does well at the Oscars, although I still prefer The Red Shoes in terms of ballet movies, and in terms of overall mindfuckery, I also prefer an anime that greatly inspired it, Perfect Blue; if you liked Black Swan, Perfect Blue is definitely worth a look!

[duchagne.livejournal.com]

Yeah this is what I was going to say. Black Swan is very similar to Perfect Blue (and Arnofsky is a big fan of PB and owns the rights to it, actually). Because I had seen Perfect Blue way before this movie, this actually made bits of Black Swan very predictable for me.

I like Black Swan better, though.