That damn Theme - A "Black Swan" review
Feb. 7th, 2011 04:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eumeliaOne of the most wonderful things about Swan Lake is the music. Tchaikovsky is my favourite classical composer, and besides the 1812 Overture, very likely his most well known melody is that damn theme:
It was that theme and of course the entire story of the ballet that accompanied the gruesome story of suffering we are put through when we watch Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan.
Okay, so as an interpretation and retelling of Swan Lake the movie does a very decent job. The ballet itself is so prototypical that it almost can't help but be used as metaphor for the way artists and especially physical ones like dancers and actors become embroiled and lost in that thing they are creating and because dancers and actors are instruments and mouthpieces for the works of other artists - writers, choreographers, composers, etc and are there to put their vision onto the stage the perfection sought is usually nowhere to be found.
Nina (the Principal) is in constant pain. If she's not in physical pain, then she's in mental agony, because that perfection she's after, that discipline she bleeds herself to (physically and metaphorically as the movie progresses) is simply unattainable, not because she isn't good enough but because perfection is something that, obviously, can never be achieved. As I said, it can only be sought.
Metaphor and the playing with the world of dance created a really horrific atmosphere. The creep factor was high, because we are closely attuned to Nina's psyche, we see what she sees and we feel what she feels (except for the part where the camera zooms in on her ass while she masturbates, but more on that later) and more often than not, she's not sure what she is seeing and what she's feeling is anxious, terrified and lonely.
Like the Swan. I know, shocking. As I said, as a retelling of Swan Lake it does a good job, especially playing with the motifs that string through the story - the dangerous double (Beth, Lily and Nine herself), the Prince who offers her a chance of freedom (Thomas the Choreographer, who views the dancers in the company as tools for his vision and as tools he can use them in any way he wishes), the Evil wizard who keeps her confined (Nina's mother) and of course the transformation to the Swan herself - which culminates in a brilliant dance by whoever did the dancing for Natalie Portman in the film.
The were moments in which the metaphor was strained and plain heavy handed. Really, the whole black and white colours everywhere! We get it she's white and pure and is slowly becoming darker - white fuzzy scarf, black lace tank top. We get that she's a caged bird! Her mother clips her wings by clipping her nails (great justice when Nina breaks her mother's fingers in order to go die by the end). And lets not forget the broken ballerina in the music box - Jesus!
Yeah, while as a psychological thriller I enjoyed it and as a retelling of Swan Lake I enjoyed it, as a movie telling a story about women's ambition is sucked so freakin' much.
Because you see, it's not a story about women's ambition, but about hysterical women, the male vision (and gaze) and the inability of women to have any kind of relationship with each other because they're constantly competing with each other for the aforementioned male gaze.
A great deal has been made about the "Lesbian Sex Scene" and yeah, it was good, Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis are beautiful women, doing beautiful things on screen and this was another part of the package - it was however, also a part of Nina's hysteria (psychosis, nervous breakdown... bottom line, hysterical) and despite it having the reality of being shown on screen - it was actually a multiplication of Nina's auto-eroticism - meaning that as Nina becomes more and more unstable, her warring persona's move outside herself and, as mentioned, we see what she sees and feel what she feels.
So yeah, that "Lesbian Sex Scene", another way of displaying Nina's sickness and inability to forge relationships with others, because of various reasons, one of them being her mother.
Jesus fucking Christ her mother. Can we stop this already? Have we not seen enough of that? How much more Mommy Dearest do we have to take? How much more of this screwed up gender policing will we be forced to watch on screen?
Yes, it's familiar and yes it creates a whole lot of suffering and drama, but for fuck's sake, how much more of it can we take?
Much the same as Thomas' way of getting his Principal motivated. He sexually harasses her, demeans her and thinks he's Pygmalion there to be create beauty out of his gaze - it doesn't help that he's the very stereotype of the French man out there to "ravish" everyone.
The male gaze was a big part of what I found irritating about the movie, because there were many times in which the narrative couldn't seem to decide where to place emphasis - are we going to show Nina's tortured soul? Or are we going to titillate the viewers? Hence the focusing on her ass (what?!) when she masturbates. Or the way Thomas danced with her and copped a mighty feel (or five) and it certainly didn't look or feel as through we were seeing or feeling it through Nina, but through Thomas himself. And, you know, the whole asking a male dancer if he would fuck Nina, just to point out that she wasn't getting her character across!
The gender dynamic was fucked. I don't know if it's because the world of classical ballet is still stuck there in Sunset Boulevard and the The Red Shoes or because Darren Aronofsky specifically wanted to write the story with that in mind along with Swan Lake.
Honestly, I don't care. Despite it being a good movie technically speaking, because it certainly got its affect across. As a story about women, it's somewhere in that place where they're nothing but pretty fragile things or monstrous bringers of death. All of them, including Nina, are caricatures of those two models, fuck, as far as I can tell, Nina's mother isn't even given a name (though she's credited as "Erica Sayers") she's soarch stereotypical.
Can we please move on?
It was that theme and of course the entire story of the ballet that accompanied the gruesome story of suffering we are put through when we watch Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan.
Okay, so as an interpretation and retelling of Swan Lake the movie does a very decent job. The ballet itself is so prototypical that it almost can't help but be used as metaphor for the way artists and especially physical ones like dancers and actors become embroiled and lost in that thing they are creating and because dancers and actors are instruments and mouthpieces for the works of other artists - writers, choreographers, composers, etc and are there to put their vision onto the stage the perfection sought is usually nowhere to be found.
Nina (the Principal) is in constant pain. If she's not in physical pain, then she's in mental agony, because that perfection she's after, that discipline she bleeds herself to (physically and metaphorically as the movie progresses) is simply unattainable, not because she isn't good enough but because perfection is something that, obviously, can never be achieved. As I said, it can only be sought.
Metaphor and the playing with the world of dance created a really horrific atmosphere. The creep factor was high, because we are closely attuned to Nina's psyche, we see what she sees and we feel what she feels (except for the part where the camera zooms in on her ass while she masturbates, but more on that later) and more often than not, she's not sure what she is seeing and what she's feeling is anxious, terrified and lonely.
Like the Swan. I know, shocking. As I said, as a retelling of Swan Lake it does a good job, especially playing with the motifs that string through the story - the dangerous double (Beth, Lily and Nine herself), the Prince who offers her a chance of freedom (Thomas the Choreographer, who views the dancers in the company as tools for his vision and as tools he can use them in any way he wishes), the Evil wizard who keeps her confined (Nina's mother) and of course the transformation to the Swan herself - which culminates in a brilliant dance by whoever did the dancing for Natalie Portman in the film.
The were moments in which the metaphor was strained and plain heavy handed. Really, the whole black and white colours everywhere! We get it she's white and pure and is slowly becoming darker - white fuzzy scarf, black lace tank top. We get that she's a caged bird! Her mother clips her wings by clipping her nails (great justice when Nina breaks her mother's fingers in order to go die by the end). And lets not forget the broken ballerina in the music box - Jesus!
Yeah, while as a psychological thriller I enjoyed it and as a retelling of Swan Lake I enjoyed it, as a movie telling a story about women's ambition is sucked so freakin' much.
Because you see, it's not a story about women's ambition, but about hysterical women, the male vision (and gaze) and the inability of women to have any kind of relationship with each other because they're constantly competing with each other for the aforementioned male gaze.
A great deal has been made about the "Lesbian Sex Scene" and yeah, it was good, Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis are beautiful women, doing beautiful things on screen and this was another part of the package - it was however, also a part of Nina's hysteria (psychosis, nervous breakdown... bottom line, hysterical) and despite it having the reality of being shown on screen - it was actually a multiplication of Nina's auto-eroticism - meaning that as Nina becomes more and more unstable, her warring persona's move outside herself and, as mentioned, we see what she sees and feel what she feels.
So yeah, that "Lesbian Sex Scene", another way of displaying Nina's sickness and inability to forge relationships with others, because of various reasons, one of them being her mother.
Jesus fucking Christ her mother. Can we stop this already? Have we not seen enough of that? How much more Mommy Dearest do we have to take? How much more of this screwed up gender policing will we be forced to watch on screen?
Yes, it's familiar and yes it creates a whole lot of suffering and drama, but for fuck's sake, how much more of it can we take?
Much the same as Thomas' way of getting his Principal motivated. He sexually harasses her, demeans her and thinks he's Pygmalion there to be create beauty out of his gaze - it doesn't help that he's the very stereotype of the French man out there to "ravish" everyone.
The male gaze was a big part of what I found irritating about the movie, because there were many times in which the narrative couldn't seem to decide where to place emphasis - are we going to show Nina's tortured soul? Or are we going to titillate the viewers? Hence the focusing on her ass (what?!) when she masturbates. Or the way Thomas danced with her and copped a mighty feel (or five) and it certainly didn't look or feel as through we were seeing or feeling it through Nina, but through Thomas himself. And, you know, the whole asking a male dancer if he would fuck Nina, just to point out that she wasn't getting her character across!
The gender dynamic was fucked. I don't know if it's because the world of classical ballet is still stuck there in Sunset Boulevard and the The Red Shoes or because Darren Aronofsky specifically wanted to write the story with that in mind along with Swan Lake.
Honestly, I don't care. Despite it being a good movie technically speaking, because it certainly got its affect across. As a story about women, it's somewhere in that place where they're nothing but pretty fragile things or monstrous bringers of death. All of them, including Nina, are caricatures of those two models, fuck, as far as I can tell, Nina's mother isn't even given a name (though she's credited as "Erica Sayers") she's so
Can we please move on?
no subject
Date: 2011-02-07 03:48 pm (UTC)So... I don't know. -laughs- I'll probably catch it on TV eventually.
(And, apparently, Natalie did her own dancing, which I think is neat.)
no subject
Date: 2011-02-07 03:50 pm (UTC)I'm very much in two minds, as is apparent I think, because it is aesthetically gorgeous. But ah! The fail!
no subject
Date: 2011-02-07 03:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-07 03:59 pm (UTC)The marketing of the movie using that is what's exploitive and gratuitous, also selling the movie as a ballet movie, which honestly misses the point.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-07 03:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-07 05:23 pm (UTC)I found the entire experience very unrewarding. I sat there for two hours getting bombarded and came away just sort of asking "err...why?".
Winona Ryder's character also brought some appalling ideas forward; rejected by Thomas she throws herself in front of a car and then carves up her face. Seriously?
I actually hoped the relationship between Nina and Lily would do some really good, interesting things. As much as I hated the Mother character I thought that if she at least prompted the actions that brought Lily and Nina together she would have been a good plot device but to not just wipe out that fulfilling sex scene out of 'reality' but to have Lily mock and alienate Nina further when she realises what she thought? I was very uncomfortable - and not for any of the reasons the film makers wanted me to be at that point.
Also, there were quite a few men in the film but aside from Thomas, I can't recall any of them actually speaking/making any sort of contribution to anything. Even the guys in the bar were just 'slightly-sexually-threatening/a typical guys in a bar'. For me, this was not only a story seen told by the male gaze, but a film for the male gaze.
I'm so glad to see someone else felt there were more problems than there were redeeming features in this supposedly 'great' film.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-07 05:50 pm (UTC)The portrayal of women was for the benefit of the psychological narrative, rather than the character's narrative, which was of no consequence obviously, because it all culminates to her death.
I have to admit, that the dynamic between Nina and Lily intrigued me, because it was Lily she fantasised about and the fact that Lily is from San-Francisco (which was clearly a queer marker, as well as the tattoos - though that was more for the Bad Girl thing, Jesus, stereotype, I know) made me think there would actually be a Lesbian b-plot, but no! I went in search of fic, there isn't much that isn't pathetic (or much at all), but there is one that I'm enjoying so I may read it in order to get something out of the story.