my assessment of Black Swan

[intertribal]

This will be longer than my assessment of True Grit, because this one had a way greater emotional impact on me.  Whereas True Grit was like a friendly slap on the back, Black Swan was like a punch in the face.

I thought this wasn't really about ballet at all - I read it as pretty clearly about "the young woman in society."  All the contrary messages that Natalie Portman's character Nina receives - be strong, except your weakness is perfect; be sexual, but then you're a whore; live a little but keep up your obligations; you're sick but how good that you lost weight; if you're the chosen one it means you're great and special but everyone will hate you; be perfect, but lose control; be the White Swan and the Black Swan (and there are only two options!) - are not reserved for ballerinas, let me put it that way.  I thought Portman did a great job exemplifying the uncertainty and awkwardness that often results from living in this pressure cooker.  I really felt for and empathized with her character, which meant I had a strong emotional connection to the movie as a whole.  I don't know if director Darren Aronofsky sort of fell into doing more than he thought he was doing (it sounds like he thought he was making a movie about how women are jealous of each other and back-stabbingly competitive), but I liked the result.  I really enjoyed the ballet scenes, especially the final surreal performance of Swan Lake at the end, but I did ultimately think that ballet was just a medium.  Just like each movie in the South Korean Whispering Corridors series (which fixates on similar topics) uses a different medium to explore the same subjects - ballet, art, choir, pick your poison - and by the way, Whispering Corridors: Wishing Stairs is the ballet movie, and it's pretty good and creepy.

Speaking of creepy, I liked the way they handled the "creepy scenes."  I loved that they didn't pause to explain or dwell on them - lets you sit there in the moment, with Portman's character and the only information she has - but I'm a fan of that kind of thing: weaving the "supernatural" so much into the fabric of the text that you can't differentiate it as supernatural at all, and you're just living in a world where reflections and paintings move on their own.  My favorite effect was definitely the whites of Portman's eyes turning red.

I think any child psychologist and anyone who's read Reviving Ophelia or Ophelia Speaks and such will be able to see each development in the movie coming - for one, all the language of "control" and "perfection" has got to be straight out of some How To Deal With Adolescent Girls handbook, special emphasis on the Eating Disorders and Self-Harm chapters.  Hell, "Perfect" is even an Alanis Morissette song: "Be a good girl/ You gotta try a little harder/ That simply wasn't good enough/ To make us proud."  It's old stuff to me - I was a teenaged girl not too long ago, and I went to a girls' college where I roomed with perfectionist ballerinas, one of whom had a textbook perfect-and-skinny mother as well as an eating disorder - although I grant that I was an over-analytical teenager, but also possessing of perfectionist impulses, especially when it came to grades and pleasing teachers (but not being a teacher's pet! it's a delicate balance), keenly aware of judgment and competition, and highly critical/hateful of my appearance and body.  Another of my roommates (not the ballerina) and I used to rock out to Courtney Love (she was the one who first recommended this movie to me).  This movie didn't "teach me" anything, although having it all bundled together and thrown in my face was a fairly exhausting experience.  I don't know how much of it is "old stuff" to people who are not so close to the issue, though, so for that reason I'm glad it's getting good reviews and the theater was packed with confused people laughing nervously during the masturbation scenes.  Or maybe people are aware, but think "well, not my daughter"?  Yeah, I've got news for you, folks.

Comments

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Huh. First review of this that actually makes me want to see it.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Based off some of the negative reviews I've read, I sort of wondered if I was seeing something different from everyone else, or just not being critical enough or something. Which is possible, it's the kind of thing that's easy for me to like.

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

I love Nathan Rabin's My Year of Flops essays not just because he manages to dig out old much derided movies but also because his stated purpose is to fight against the "Everything Sucks" attitude that pervades in society by giving these movies a second look to see if they are really as bad as everyone claimed or if they just were victims of bad press and everyone joined in on the hatred. The most startling article is when he praises Freddie Got Fingered as a surrealist masterpiece.

But he also encourages people to love the "bad" movies that they aren't supposed to like.

But I thought everyone loved Black Swan.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Critically, yeah, they did. I meant people here on LJ have not been so enthusiastic, and sometimes if I hear un-enthusiasm from genre-people I think, "hmm, were the mainstream critics who see all movies just not discerning enough?"

[marshallpayne1.livejournal.com]

If you haven't seen this...

http://ecbatan.livejournal.com/113138.html

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Ooh, spiffy. Thanks for letting me know.

[marshallpayne1.livejournal.com]

Forgot to say, congrats. Cool deal! :-)

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

I can't see the video. :(

Sounds interesting; it'll be awhile before I can see it. All I know about it is that Portman and the choreographer are having a baby and getting married. I think masturbation, esp. female masturbation, is one of those things everybody (well, except perhaps the most cloistered of fundamentalists) knows about but many still don't talk about in traditional and/or mainstream spheres.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Oh, the video is just a Hole song ("Doll Parts") that I thought was appropriate. And that had an official video (full of broken dolls of course).

Yeah, it was just kind of LOL to me that people in the theater (middle-aged people) were like literally nervous-giggling throughout that scene. I was like, yes, this is helpful.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

here's a song for female masturbation, courtesy Cyndi Lauper. :P Apparently these middle-aged people also missed out on 80's pop music.

Well I see them every night in tight blue jeans
In the pages of a blue boy magazine
Hey, I've been thinking of a new sensation
I'm picking up good vibrations
Oop she bop, she bop

Do I wanna go out with a lion's roar
Huh, yea, I wanna go south and get me some more
Hey, they say that a stitch in time saves nine
They say I better stop, or I'll go blind
Oop she bop, she bop

She bop, he bop, a we bop
I bop, you bop, a they bop
Be bop, be bop, a lu bop
I hope He will understand
She bop, he bop, a we bop
I bop, you bop, a they bop
Be bop, be bop, a lu she bop
Oo oo she do, she bop

Hey, hey they say I better get a chaperone
Because I can't stop messin' with the danger zone
Hey, I won't worry, and I won't fret
Ain't no law against it yet
Oop she bop she bop
She bop, he bop, we bop...

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

I saw it less in gendered terms and more in general "artistic physical discipline makes you crazy" terms. It's not that I didn't see the body image factor involved (I was almost freaking out when Mila Kunis was eating the cheeseburger) but I also had some major flashbacks to The Wrestler which also had the "dying artist takes a fall" final scene. If you haven't seen that one, you should as Mickey Rourke tortures himself just as much as Natalie Portman does (although in The Wrestler you expect it to be a painful movie)

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

That's how others have seen it too - artistic physical discipline makes you crazy - but, to me, so much of what was told to Portman seemed directed at her being a woman rather than at her being a ballerina (of course, I don't know what gets told to ballerinas). Then her relationship with her mother, and the whole little girl vs. grown woman internal struggle. And the male ballerinas were neither very characterized nor crazy. I'd like to see The Wrestler, but never got around to it when it came out.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I want to see it--I was thinking/hoping it would be along the lines you describe.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

I kind of was hoping the same. You might like it - but I don't know, this movie produces diverse and unpredictable responses, to say the least.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

I just keep wondering how anybody can see this ballet company as anything but food for Vincent Cassel's overt "leetle interchangeable girrrls" fetish, and being annoyed on their behalf--these chicks are athletes, genuinely putting themselves through the wringer every damn day, and here he is towering above them, happily watching them self-destruct until they're just cracked enough to be attractive to him.

But then again, I also can't help wondering why he doesn't just cast two different people as Odile and Odette. Is it normal that one person play them both? Wouldn't they have to be on stage at the same time at some point? Here's where my lack of ballet knowledge fails me.

Also funny: Ksenia Solo turning up just to tell Natalie Portman: "Fuck you!", and stalk off.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Yeah, which is why I don't think it's really about ballet. No idea how real ballet companies work, but probably not like that.

On your second para. - no, Swan Lake is always cast with one lead ballerina who plays both Odile and Odette, because Odile has to look identical to Odette to fool the prince into thinking it's her. And they're never on-stage at the same time in human form (a swan plays Odette at one point) - they never confront each other, Odette is never like "bitch lay off" or anything, she just goes off and kills herself. IDK, but I think it's kind of the point of the ballet, having one ballerina dance both roles.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

Hopefully not like that!;)

Oh, okay...though yes, I can't help but see it as an inherent flaw of the narrative that there's no confrontation in Swan Lake. Maybe because the prince's confusion is more "important" than Odette's situation? Hmmm, probably. Hell, even Giselle, which also involves suicide for stupid reasons, has more agency than that.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Well, it's like a Shakespeare romanti-comedy except with Bad Ending where the misunderstandings are not resolved and Rocks Fall, etc. (seriously, it fills me with the same discomfort as Much Ado About Nothing). I mean, it is Odette's story - the whole thing is orchestrated so Odette can't break free of her curse - but no, she has no agency. The Prince tries to have a confrontation with Bad Wizard Guy but it doesn't work.

The whole thing is set up as a No Win scenario, though, one that confrontation can't resolve. Odette's fucked because the Prince swears eternal love to Odile (after swearing it to Odette), and thus even if Odette came storming in, the Prince wouldn't be able to save her, cuz he's verbally betrayed her, and now she has to be a swan forever (these are pretty, uh, powerful curses). But I guess the resolution is the Heavenly HEA, since the Prince commits suicide after her and they go to heaven. Guess suicide ain't sinning in this world.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

No, not at all. Suicide is beautiful (in ballet).

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

And in Japanese horror. :P

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

True dat!

Okay, so I finally finished watching it, and...I think the thing that rings least true for me is that Nina seems to take so incredibly little joy in what she does. Yes, ballet dancers treat themselves badly, in a lot of ways, but no more or less than many other dancers/athletes. They understand that their window of opportunity is small and their bodies will break down, but the lure isn't just being tiny and girly and perfect--the lure is that they can literally do things no one else can do. And NIna is just...I mean, she's SO crazy, right from the beginning, and so utterly strained and weird and joyless, I don't really understand how she manages to keep her place in the company (which she's had for some time, if you believe her Mom). And the only reason I can see Tomas(?) promoting her like this is that his fragility fetish gets pinged--but OTOH, how can you organize an entire headline show around a girl who can barely make it to work in the morning? Maybe it's my being-around-the-theatre-all-my-life bullshit-o-meter, but I have trouble doing the "it's opera!" equation in my head, and it kept me from enjoying the film the way I wanted to.

That said, if people think Portman's performance is one-note, that ain't really her fault--one note is all Aronofsky gave her to play, and she did it well. Plus, here and there--when the Black Swan comes out--you can see other stuff. I just wish she had more time to enjoy her victory.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Interesting. It's certainly true that she doesn't have much time to enjoy her victory, but I have to say that I didn't find her that crazy (but maybe that gives you some impression of what I'm like, heh). I feel like she's maladjusted, but there was a lot about her that I could relate to, which is why I used to have the gif icon of her biting her nails. And other people I have known my age as well. I do agree, however, that she doesn't take much joy in it. I always got the impression that her mom was the driving force behind her doing ballet at all - anyway, I think that's why a lot of people point to the scene where she calls her mother after getting the lead as a highlight, because she does show joy there that's nonetheless totally tied to her mother's approval and totally, I don't know, vulnerable (instead of ferocious)?