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?"