Black Swan is a beautiful movie.
It is beautifully directed, beautifully acted. Its lead actress is beautiful. The cinematography is beautiful.
But unfortunately it is so simplistic, that it is really inadequate. It doesn't live up to its own hype and in the end it is forgettable.
The story is such a cliché: innocent but obsessive ballerina (insert any profession here) dreams to play in swan lake, embodying simultaneously the white and the black swan. Unable to be in touch with the dark side, and throrougly assisted by her own psychological issues, she creates an alternate hallucinating reality where a fellow ballerina is after her and her role, and in the end she loses her mind. She becomes consumed with by the role she so desperately tries to identify with and in the end, only in death can she find the union between her two sides that she so craves for.
Simple? Yes (if you don't believe me just watch/read any production of swan lake).
Simplistic? It didn't have to be but it is.
I am trying to think why this movie didn't work for me. I wanted to see it so much, it ticked so many boxes. But in the end I left the theatre entirely unimpressed and emotionally distanced.
I think the problem of this movie is that it pretends to be something else, for so long, that in the end, when the truth is clear to the audience, the rest of the movie feels like a cheat. Why did it have to pretend to be a 'psychological horror movie'? Was it only in order to make us feel Nina's claustrophobia and paranoia? I am sure you could do that without the fake horror bits. Everyone feels that people are after them, but they don't visualize it as a horror movie...
What is left in the end? - I don't know.
Barbara Hershey was over the top, but good, in the role of the pushy mother.
Natalie Portman was very good in the first half, I think.
Female masturbation scenes are the thing du jour, so I guess, that's also a plus.
And my favorite scene of the movie: when Nina grows her black wings dancing. Impeccably done, beautiful scene.
But in the end, as always, what is beauty without substance?
1 comment:
Completely agree.
Not a terribly bad movie, but it falls short of everything it seemed to promise. This is a girl who cannot deal with her weaknesses, her imperfections. She's driven crazy because of her mother, her job, her frustration. These are not simple matters, but like you say, the movie makes them look so simple it's annoying - a pretty girl who wanted to be perfect and died trying, because that's what people do when they are in extremely competitive environments. Whatever.
And to confine all the psychological pressure you feel when you cannot handle your "loser" side to a gory, horror movie standard is just too simplistic, yes.
all this to say I agree with you. Nevertheless, I still enjoyed the movie, ah ah! And Portman was beautiful.
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