Black Swan - % % % %

Startling and hallucinatory, Black Swan is a psychological horror story. Nina, played with every muscle by Nathalie Portman, achieves her lifelong dream of playing the Swan Queen in her ballet company's production of Swan Lake. Nina is a fragile perfectionist dominated by her live-in mother, a former dancer herself. Nina is already fraying at the edges from the physical pressures of professional ballet, so the elevation to her new role and the challenges, amplified by her director's sexual manipulations, lead her down the rabbit hole.

To succeed, we are told, one must give everything of themselves with abandon. Be free in the full sacrifice to one's craft. The greatest artists, athletes, whatever one admires, completely immerse themselves in their passion and are dedicated to perfection, n'est-ce pas? Nina releases her ego and identity in the complete submission of herself in the role of prima ballerina and she dissolves.

Directed by Darren Aronofsky, the film excels in this dissolution of reality. No other director achieves such a tangible, empathetic form of fear and nausea at the destruction of the human body. I left the theater after seeing Requiem for a Dream, thankful for my arms and for never having been so desperate or tragic in my life to succumb to prostitution. "Black Swan" makes me so grateful for the solidity of my body and my fingers and my bones and the entire thing. He achieves a rare squeamish terror that directors of Saw films should envy.



Furthermore, the disorientation of the climax and finale is complete and unpredictable. Unlike a film such as "Shutter Island", there are no explanations drawn out for the audience. The events swirl around Nina like the hallucinations they are. I've never seen such an accurate portrayal of the effects of Ecstasy on film. That alone is quite impressive. Nina's identity refracts like shattered mirrors as her self becomes her only real human connection and as she disintegrates into her new role.

Her body, her ultimate tool, rejects her and transforms itself, or perhaps she unconsciously transforms herself. Like a neurotic twitch that one cannot restrain, her skin and fingers and blood begin to alter against her will. A ballerina must be a master of her body, and her bulimia enables an illusion of physical and psychological control.

She is fragile and pale, like an egg, and as the pressure increases she cracks in a messy, messy way. It's exhilarating and spectacular and queasy and actually scary.

The casting is fantastic with the former prima, whom Nina replaces, played by Winona Ryder, and the new challenger played by Mila Kunis, who I am delighted to see in a drama. She is fantastic and utilizes her charisma to seduce with danger, rather than self-deprecating humor. The director of the company is slyly portrayed by Vincent Cassel using his sexuality and authority to embody that special kind of manipulative, seductive machismo. Rounding out the cast is Deborah Winger as the mother. She is quite terrifying yet believable. She resists the caricature of the failed mother living through her daughter and deftly plays the mind games of the most brilliant passive-aggressive matriarchs. Nathalie Portman deserves award considerations. She carries the film. Her character is nearly hysterical through the whole film yet she never becomes shrill or irritating. At the open of the film, I was saddened that such a good actress should immediately call to mind the stilted dialogue of Padme from Star Wars. To my relief she obliterated that character from my mind with her passion in this new role.

I will say as a draw back that the sound effects, while effective, were occaisionally over done and comical at first. Such a hallucinatory film is difficult for an audience to transition into at first and the sound effects just felt goofy for the first quarter of the film. Even towards the end, I found them heavy handed.

The pacing of the film was excellent and reminded me of the great psychological thrillers of Hitchcock. I am extremely impressed and thrilled that Aronofsky has returned to such dream-like territory. He is, in my opinion, at his best and most unique when creating a whirl-wind of the mind. His dryer character drama, "The Wrestler" was epic and poignant. But it lacked the joy and magic of creation that Aronofsky holds. If you are capable of extraordinary flights of fantasy, I'm not sure why you would ever tell such a miserable story, no matter how well told or illuminating it is. It'd be like Terry Gilliam directing Erin Brockovich. Why? And I think The Wrestler was a fantastic story of great depth and interest. I'm just so thrilled to get more from Aronofsky's imagination.

There is so much more I could say about the body manipulation inherent in such religious ferocity and the self-destructive commitment to success and work as a form of enslavement. What is success for? Is anyone really remembered in our ADD society? Are professional athletes any different than this woman crushing her toes to be beautiful? Is the drive for success always based in a lack of self-confidence and a frailty of identity?

Awesome. Scary. Trippy. Cool.

You accidentally came to my website and welcome!

I am thrilled by this new addition to the blogger arsenal. Se here's the tracking of where my visitors have been from in the past. Pretty nifty.

Pageviews by Countries
United States 20
India 3
Switzerland 2
Spain 2
United Kingdom 2
Greece 2
Australia 1
Canada 1
Iceland 1
Jamaica 1

Since I don't know anyone in Greece or Jamaica, I'm going to guess that all the other views are also people who wandered here from Google. I hope you found it interesting. Now that I have confirmation that this blog does get some views even with the previously crummy way I've been keeping it, perhaps I shall be better motivated to improve my content. I am having an oddly sincere and probably nonstrategic moment, but I confess that I would like to offer something of value to the internet. I like processing my ideas about films through reviews, which could be useful for others. I'm not sure what will be most appealing for an audience. I'll mull it over, but if anyone has suggestions, I'm open to 'em. Thank you for visiting.

The Road - % % % % %

I have not seen such an engrossing and encompassing film in many months. Something about the intensity of the genre demands the audience's attention, and yet this film was more penetrating in its sparseness and more emotional in its anonymous performances, making none its equal.

Marvelous. It is a miserable story. At its core is the essence of why we live. In creating a truly desolate world, the story from the novel "The Road", by Cormac McCarthy, strips away the other concerns in life that we are cluttered with living in modernity. This leaves the hunt for food, the fear of danger and violence and then the radical question, why live at all?

After an unknown apocalypse of such extreme proportions that all life aside from human has ceased, a father and son head south. Flashbacks expand on their situation, telling the backstory of a wife and mother, Charlize Theron, who finally gives up so completely and, spoiler alert, removes her layers of warm clothing to walk into the dark and cold wild. Alone with the boy, the man, masterfully played by Viggo Mortensen, trudges along fighting to get the boy to an age when he can survive on his own or prepare himself for the likelihood of merciful suicide. The film deftly allows in the most gruesome of realities without reveling in their monstrous power. Many of the surviving people have taken to cannibalism since all of the animals and plants are dead. The horrors of this environment are acknowledged and momentarily explored to establish the extreme danger for the pair, but are not embraced with prurient thrill as is often the case in the apocalyptic genre. The film is filled with fear and allows horror, but is more elegant than a more base thrill or shock. Rather, it holds the suspense of morality at its core. Is this the right decision? Can I live with this choice? What will be the consequence of my decision? And the suspense of these moments does not fade in the resolution of the events because the mind holds the tension of such moments long after they have passed.

This is a story written with a masterful understanding of the human condition at its essence. It is brilliant.

The film is dominated by gray and dirty landscapes of dead trees and decayed society. Interspersed with poignant close ups of hands clutching at tenderness and tears trickling down worn cheeks, the story keeps the man and his son at the center. They don't have names. They are unnecessary in this world since other people are a danger, and everything unnecessary has been stripped away. There are moments of joy interspersed accidentally in their journey. A swim under a waterfall. A discovered can of coke. The embroidered couch cushion with blue flowers in his parents' living room. Some elements of modern life that we occupy ourselves with remain in this wasteland.

The performances are universally real and compelling. I can't imagine how a director was able to elicit such a performance of raw fear, vulnerability and justice from a child. Extraordinary. The scenes involving strangers like Robert Duvall, Guy Pierce and the underused Michael K. Williams
(c'mon and hire this man more, people! He is Omar from the wire and the most extraordinary actor from the whole series! That man needs a better agent!) are filled with fear, curiosity and tenderness. They allow the film to breathe, filling moments with the real grace of life, human connection. And that is what leads to the unexpected happiness of the ending. It seems unimaginable until it finally happens and is in parallel with sparse, barren nature of the film. This visual metaphor, the boy and the man alone in a barren world illuminates the core of the story. Human connection is the reason for life. It's the reason to go on. It is what love is. It is what life is. I am astonished by the profundity elicited by this film and moved by how effective it is in pervading an audience with its story and themes. Magnificent. Magnificent.

Director John Hillcoat's previous film "The Proposition" takes another raw genre centered around survival and the human condition, the Western, and offers a bleak and cruel perspective as well, but not to the same effect. In The Proposition, familial loyalty is tested and the situations never create enough tension to mentally shake the audience into philosophical crisis in the same way that he manages to in The Road. And he's Canadian. I didn't think it possible for a country with a functioning NHS and little poverty to speak of to produce such a morose dude, but I guess those long winters can put one in touch with the power of bleakness. Really a fantastic movie. Brilliant.