Black Swan (2010)

Via here

Look- Black Swan is not allowed to be shitty. 
It can only be phenomenal. I feel like it's been kept from me and i needed to see it NOW since I saw the trailer, which seems like years ago. Not that i'm not rabid about Darren Aronofsky or Natalie Portman. They're generally pretty good but it seems like they've struck a nerve with Black Swan, especially with Portman- it's like this role is going to be the one that defines a career. I mean we all love her in Leon but you wouldn't want to be defined by something you did while you were a child. So i'm looking forward for to some bat-shit crazy Giallo.

Sit-down. Oh. You are sat, anyway this is gonna take a while.

Black Swan is about so many things. I feel- right now, having just seen it- like it's the definitive film on so many subjects:- Illness, The Human Body, Femininity, Performing and Stardom.

It can be so simple to forget that our bodies are these amazing machines. You might have problems with your body but when you think about the way it’s constructed and repairs its self, it’s astounding. Black Swan (amongst the things above, which I’ll get to) is about a body at its limit. Not a conked-out Model T but a Lamborghini that’s been going full speed for so long without stopping. The difference between the human body and say... a washing machine is the brain; the consciousness and unconsciousness. Natalie Portman’s Nina has her body telling her, she has to Slow. Down.

Her brain will not allow it.

I want to say Nina has body dysmorphia, but it’s not quite that. Body dysmorphia is ‘a preoccupation with an imagined defect in appearance causing significant stress or behavioral impairment’. Nina is imagining body defects but she’s quite relaxed about them. For example, if she where to accidentally seriously cut herself, she would nonchalantly seal the cut and work through the pain. Her brain is dulled to physical pain. The only pain she can feel is deeply psychological and it’s constant and it can’t be moderated.

Playing this character must have been exhausting for her- Natalie Portman is highly strung in almost every scene. It feels her hallucinations are her body sneaking into her brain to remind to stop but her brain is so consentrated on perfection in her dancing that nothing else is going through.

Not that the dancing is the challenging part for Nina, if anything she probably feels ‘on top’ of the dancing; it’s performing aspects of her character she’s not in-tune with, that will be her struggle.

As the Queen Swan, she has to be the white swan- virginal and pure but she also has to be the black swan- sensual and alluring. How can she be seductive, when her whole being is so closed to anything that isn’t ballet.

Nina is the white swan; she is studious but she’s ultimately asexual. In the same way, you go on a course to build your skills at work- Nina objectively devises she will need to discover her sexuality. She's beginning to realise that sensuality is as important to her female identity as her poise and grace.

Obviously developing your sexuality to the point, you feel in control- that it’s part of your equilibrium is something that takes years to develop and has the tendency to be messy even in the most ideal conditions. Nina is trying to rush it through in a matter of weeks.

But when she does become the Black Swan, it’s simply joyous. It’s the visual definition of a flower in bloom, a star being born; the experience absorbing of a transcendental performance. You're watching Nina ascend to greatness but also Natalie Portman. At the end of the performance/film, you feel like you've just seen The Beatles at the Cavern Club or Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire.

It's for this reason, i feel sorry for anyone else in Black Swan that isn’t called Natalie Portman.

Everyone else is set-dressing; props in the Natalie Portman Show. Not that she’s over the top, Norma Desmond-like in her performance- it’s just that she has to be and is the best thing in every scene. It’s almost like she has to nail the character of Nina 100%, so she never has to do it again like she’s exorcising everything that came before in her career. The reason people love Black Swan so, is that you are literally watching an actor shedding their skin and maturing into their future-self. As much as I love Vincent Cassel, he can’t attempt to get a look in. It must be the only film, where he’s not the best thing in it.

That said, Barbara Hershey is pretty terrifying as Nina’s obsessive stage-mother. I’d imagine that after seeing Black Swan, a lot of girls will call their mothers and say ‘Mom, I’ve overreacted in the past- You are definitely not that bad…’

As I’ve said Aronofsky’s ouvre has not always excited me- Pi is far too cold, The Fountain is far too ponderous, Requiem For A Dream is too bleak for my taste BUT The Wrestler was a massive sea-change. There was compassion and emotion there. I don’t think he’s an auteur in the conventional sense but he can tell a story.

Because Black Swan is so much about hallucination and façade, Aronofsky’s uses this sense of visual distortion. He uses mirrors, lookalikes and blurring and obviously the shakiness’ of hand-held digital photography.

His use of hand-held digital camera shows is a subtle but implicit style choice. People misconceive hand-held photography in fiction as an implication of ‘reality’/vérité but being so close-up to people is unreal, the act of being in someone else’s face is about implying tension.

I think my mother (Hi Mom!) summed up the experience of Black Swan best, when she told me that when the lights went up after she’d seen it- all these guys were mouthing to their dates, ‘What the fuck was that about?!'
I'm constantly wondering the female experience but after Black Swan, I feel like I'm a bit more informed.


I watched Black Swan (2010) at the cinema.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Le Diner de Cons(1998) ...