Cinema Snark: Black Swan

All right, I think enough time has passed for me to review Black Swan without babbling in incoherent horror or just plain having a verbal orgasm about how much I loved this freaking movie.

In short, Black Swan is a singularly unnerving and remarkably beautiful piece of work. From what little I've seen of Darren Aronofsky's work (The Fountain and bits of Requiem For a Dream), he has a remarkable sense of how to create a picture. He has an amazing instinct for using light and darkness to maximum effect, and knows how to create a surprisingly unified visual color palette, making his films visually engaging even as you ask yourself what the fuck is going on with the plot. To be honest, I could write several posts just analyzing his visual style, so for now I'll just keep it to this: Aronofsky makes visually rewarding movies, whether they be complex and fanciful or simple but elegant.

One review of Black Swan complains that the movie falls into too many ballet movie stereotypes, like having shots of the dancers' feet, or examining the mental and physical toll that ballet takes upon its practitioners. Rather than dismiss the writer as a complete fucking moron right away, I decided to wait until I had seen the movie so I could make my own decision.

It didn't take me long to realize that yes, she is a complete fucking moron. First of all, of course there are going to be shots of the dancers' feet. That's like watching Ray and complaining that the film shows him playing the piano, or watching Rambo and complaining that you see him murdering people. Second, perish the thought that there would be any emotionally or mentally fragile people in a psychological horror film. I guess since people have made movies about crazy ballerinas before, it means that no one can ever do anything like that again. It's a pity no one thought to tell Darren that he was wasting his time before he started working on this movie, much less before he released it. Wow, he must be really embarrassed right now.

Finally, maybe the reason that so many films suggest that ballet is emotionally and physically damaging is because OH HEY IT IS. Ballerinas have to maintain a figure that would make a Barbie doll look like the model for a Rubens painting, as well as achieve a stunning degree of technical prowess in doing shit that the human body does not do naturally. Oh, and there's always the danger of someone younger and prettier than you coming along and taking your place. So, yeah. If you're really serious about having a career in ballet, it will fuck with your head and with your body, and you'll be reaching the end of your career when most people are still twenty to thirty years away from retirement.

And that's just ballet. The performing arts in general--and oh hey, Van Gogh, I guess visual art works too--are a veritable magnet for crazy. Let's face it: well-adjusted people don't spend their lives pretending to be someone else. Or, to be more accurate, some people do--but they're not nearly as good at it. You can be a perfectly stable person and learn all the basic mechanics of performance--you can even be perfectly competent at it--but you're never going to be great. Greatness at anything requires some sort of innate quality that sets you apart from others, a different way of moving or thinking or reacting--because if everyone else can do it then it's not great at all; it's just average.

And wow, look at that--this ties right into the themes of the movie. Vincent Cassel's character Thomas is constantly telling Nina (Natalie Portman) that she needs to let go and stop being so straight-laced. She's perfect to dance the virtuous White Swan, but the Black Swan--the slutty evil twin--needs to have a darker, more wanton energy about her. It's not a coincidence that the company's previous prima ballerina (Winona Ryder) is unstable--Thomas admits that she's mesmerizing to watch onstage in large part because she taps into some sort of mental reservoir of crazy. She can go places that others fear to tread, and that makes her great. The problem is, once you let the crazy in, it's pretty damn hard to keep it under control (why so serious, Heath?*). I mean, sure, Thomas [SPOILER ALERT but not really because he makes it pretty obvious] is a lecherous bastard who wants Natalie Portman's mouth on and/or around his genitalia, but he's one of my favorite characters in the film because he actually knows what it takes to make great art.

Time and time again, history has shown us that art is more about expression of emotion than pure technique--and every time an art form gets too restrictive, someone shows up and takes it in a new and visceral direction. Art with no soul isn't art, whether it's ballet or painting or opera or flower-arranging. Christ, if I had a nickel for every time I've heard a beautiful voice sing an aria with no conviction or connection to the words, I would be Steve Motherfucking Jobs (yes, with a capital M). I don't care what degree of technical proficiency you possess: if you can't connect your emotions and intentions to your performance, you do not deserve to be onstage. Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau is the most renowned Lieder singer of the twentieth century, and it's sure as hell not because he had the best voice in the world. His technique was "meh," but he had a unique command of the music and language, and knew how to use the color of his voice to evoke the desired emotion in his audience. And thus: famous.

But I digress. Long story short: one of the main ideas of Black Swan is that you have to be willing to throw yourself completely into a performance, body and soul, in order to excel--and you may not come out of it intact. The film treats ballet as something visceral, something simultaneously beautiful and destructive, which definitely fits into the strong themes of duality. The two dominant colors in the film are, of course, black and white (there's a club scene where the color palette shifts drastically, but the lights alternately flash red and green, keeping the theme of opposites going). Aronofsky also juxtaposes madness and sanity, attraction and revulsion, youth and age, success and failure--and the prominent use of mirrors throughout the film (which makes sense to anyone who's ever been in a dance studio) definitely contributes to the idea of a divided self.

And beyond their symbolic use, the mirrors are used quite effectively in the "making you void your bowels in the middle of the theater" department. The visual effects in the movie are handled extremely well, in large part because many of them are subtle enough that you're not entirely sure that you really did see what you thought you did: shifting faces, reflections that move just a millisecond after they should, and other such relatively tame things (considering the content of most modern horror movies) somehow become much more unnerving than they should be. The same can be said for the stellar sound effects, such as the soft rustle of feathers in the sound of a passing metro, or the sound of peeling skin. Jesus it's freaky. Black Swan is one of those movies which spends most of its time putting you into an uncomfortable, tense place--so when the actual horror moments happen, they're at least twice as effective.

Also in the category of "things that shouldn't be scary but oh god oh god whyyyyy":

- Nail clippers.
- The phrase "sweet girl".
- Lesbian sex. (No but really. Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis are two very attractive women and the two of them getting it on has every right to be extremely hot, but the sound and visual effects used in that scene make it slightly terrifying.)

So, yeah. You should see it, but only if you have a high tolerance for fear--because it's one of the most legitimately scary movies I have ever seen in my life. It's also extremely well-made and well-acted, and is going to be a serious contender when Oscar season rolls around. Don't miss it.

(*Too soon? Yeah, I thought it might be.)