Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky, 2010)

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

Dennis Lim's discussion of Black Swan as camp.

[Murdoch]

Except that Aronofsky misses one of camp's most essential qualities: its tenderness. There is nothing resembling love in his depiction of dance

I take issue with this, Aronofsky seems to be as interested in the process and technique of dance as he is in the physical/emotional toll it takes on dancers. Regularly interspersed throughout the film are almost documentary-like sequences of Portman doing stretches with an instructor, seeing a masseuse. I think Aronofsky's interest lies as much in dance as in character, and I felt a tenderness seep through the madness during these instances and was reminded in part of the Wiseman documentary La Danse, the pacing was not frenzied like the majority of the film but had a calmness in letting what was shown speak for itself and that these so-to-speak realistic displays of dance were as compelling as Portman's headtrips. And I think therein lies a compassion toward the world on display, in this interest in preparation and detail, and that there is a love for the material since dance isn't just on the periphery or used only to suit the story, but given as much attention as Portman.

[Jeff]

A.O. Scott has a great new piece up in praise of Portman.

[R0lf]

I think the only problem I had with the movie was that as far as an artist suffering to perfect their art it shows no resemblance, grounding or likeness to reality but then as far as being sheer silly fantasy (someone projecting a sort of social construct of a mad suffering artist) it veers too far back in trying to ground itself. Its a good movie but achieves some sort of middle ground in not deciding what it wants or simply not understanding anything about its themes. The only thing that makes me believe that Aronovsky has any real understanding or investment in this subject is by projecting that he is holding a mirror up to his own career.

[Grand Illusion]

I think the only problem I had with the movie was that as far as an artist suffering to perfect their art it shows no resemblance, grounding or likeness to reality

I don't understand this. What about the endless practices and rehearsals? What about the sustained foot, ankle, and other injuries? What about the rash from constant chafing of the whatever-the-fuck it is that they wear? What about the single-mindedness towards technical perfection of a craft, even to the exclusion of a social life? What about the worry and mental stress about getting the gig/job/role/part/etc.? What about balancing a demanding mentor/boss with a demanding family life?

All of these were featured in the film. Do none have "resemblance, grounding or likeness to reality?"

[James Mills]

Also as a bit of a side question what's wrong with silliness and an exercise for the exercise's sake?

I never stated anything was wrong with an exercise for exercise's sake, only that it would have better resonance if (like so many great films have proven capable of) some form of personally philosophical insight from the director was accessible in its viewing. I don't sense the passion, the burning desire of expression needing to be released in Black Swan, while I sincerely felt it in most of DA's previous work.

[R0lf]

I think the only problem I had with the movie was that as far as an artist suffering to perfect their art it shows no resemblance, grounding or likeness to reality

I don't understand this. What about the endless practices and rehearsals? What about the sustained foot, ankle, and other injuries? What about the rash from constant chafing of the whatever-the-fuck it is that they wear? What about the single-mindedness towards technical perfection of a craft, even to the exclusion of a social life? What about the worry and mental stress about getting the gig/job/role/part/etc.? What about balancing a demanding mentor/boss with a demanding family life?

All of these were featured in the film. Do none have "resemblance, grounding or likeness to reality?"

Yeah I was being incredibly vague. The bits that you describe are the grounding forces that I was talking about but I disagree that those things equal a breakdown and the insanity that results I felt as more fake pathos than anything else. This left me thinking that the two didn't marry together well enough. To give an example from other movies; I felt the convenient story telling was very similar to something like Nine where Guido's infidelity was the cause of his creative block. In that scenario the writers loosely linked together some rhetorical puritanical moral ideal the audience could relate to that had nothing real to say either thematically or about the character. Where the original 8 1/2 explored and begged the question about the validity of creativity and the role of the artist. That is to say I thought Black Swan lacked the real grounding set up which followed through to the raw emotional breakdown of something like Cassavete's Opening Night and lacked the - also emotional - disintegration into sheer gleeful silly fantasy of something like Inland Empire or as others have mentioned Showgirls. I think I echo the opinion of some of the other comments that this is a good movie but for what it was doing a lot of other movies have covered the ground in a lot more satisfying overall package.

[karmajuice]

I have very mixed feelings about this film. On the one hand, it was a hell of a roller coaster ride. I liked Portman's performance. I liked its tight-rope walk between earnestness and absurdity. I loved the shot where she sprouts feathers while dancing.

At the same time, the sheer, simplistic dumbness of her psychosis undermines everything worth liking about the film. But it's such an integral part of the film, and of those parts that I like, that it's impossible to dismiss it and even difficult to criticize it. So my opinion is kind of a Schrodinger's Cat: I think it is simultaneously pretty stupid and pretty great.

The film's most glaring problem is its horror show theatrics. The problem isn't the theatrics themselves, however, but their lack of consistency and thematic unity. Let's take a gander at one of the film's superior antecedents: Repulsion. That film has similar horror movie scares and haunted house tricks, but they all spring from two rich and relevant thematic wells: the flat she inhabits and her fear of male sexuality. They are clear manifestations of her neuroses and as such they give depth to her characterization and expression to her fears (by sharing them with the audience).

Black Swan fails to harmonize its scares with its character's psychosis, or with the thematic thrust of the film. In some cases it succeeds: for instance, the (very real) cringe-inducing injuries brought on by dance and their body-horror exaggerations (tearing the skin off her finger). If the film centered around this body horror and grounded its hallucinations in that pain, it may have managed something more cohesive. If she is so sexually repressed, why do none of her hallucinations incorporate this anxiety effectively?
The doppelganger imagery is sound, mainly due to its relation to the original ballet, but the "overcoming herself" stance feels decidedly half-baked and most of the scares elicited from this strain are especially clichéd. Most of the other hallucinations are random, with Aronofsky indulging in any cheap scare he stumbles over -- Ryder stabbing herself in the face and the stupid, stupid, stupid scene where her mother's portraits yell at her, to name just two. And yeah, you can rationalize those, but the connections are paper-thin at best and they don't contribute anything meaningful to our understanding of the character or the film. The first half of the third act only achieves its momentum through sheer accumulation of thrills and in retrospect that whole segment is pretty insubstantial.

[James Mills]

The film's most glaring problem is its horror show theatrics. The problem isn't the theatrics themselves, however, but their lack of consistency and thematic unity. Let's take a gander at one of the film's superior antecedents: Repulsion. That film has similar horror movie scares and haunted house tricks, but they all spring from two rich and relevant thematic wells: the flat she inhabits and her fear of male sexuality. They are clear manifestations of her neuroses and as such they give depth to her characterization and expression to her fears (by sharing them with the audience).

... the "overcoming herself" stance feels decidedly half-baked and most of the scares elicited from this strain are especially clichéd. Most of the other hallucinations are random, with Aronofsky indulging in any cheap scare he stumbles over -- Ryder stabbing herself in the face and the stupid, stupid, stupid scene where her mother's portraits yell at her, to name just two. And yeah, you can rationalize those, but the connections are paper-thin at best and they don't contribute anything meaningful to our understanding of the character or the film. The first half of the third act only achieves its momentum through sheer accumulation of thrills and in retrospect that whole segment is pretty insubstantial.

I especially agree with these two points, both of which are astutely observed and well articulated.

[mfunk9786]

Good to know!

[Mr. Ned]

I caught this a couple nights ago and I got almost exactly what I expected. While I still have minor qualms, Aronofsky keeps himself in check for the most part

Spoiler

the aforementioned face-stabbing and sex scene between Nina and Lily perhaps a little too blunt and overly visceral

and makes a movie decidedly his own even if tenets of Polanski, Argento and Cronenberg are prevalent throughout. It's not surprising Aronofsky's synthesis of themes--body-horror, feminine delirium, and theatrical preparation and production as horror show--feels diluted compared to either of those three at their best. Black Swan spoke to me best as a sister film to The Wrestler, as it takes the redemptive martyrdom of that film's look at the artistic process and turns it on its head. In this film, the politics of art (and artist) as spectacle are in the opposite extreme: Nina suffers throughout not so we pity her or laud her for some saintly sacrifice ...she suffers so we can enjoy it.

Before I get the misogynist sticker stamped on my forehead, hear me out. If anything, Black Swan is Aronofsky's deconstruction of camp, what campiness means and entails for artist and audience in relation to the characters depicted. One of the things that makes campiness so digestable is its ability to cover nearly all the reactive spectrums an artistic product can muster: if done right, its grandiosity can provoke whatever the artist and spectator want it to in terms of emotional response, critical tangent, or formalistic flourish. Campiness is fun because it emphasizes its own artifice, and that recognition of assemblage and theatricality gives it a great amount of endurance. It's big, bold and brash and makes you feel involved, like you're in on a big joke, and can add whatever spice you want to the experience. In that sense, camp, as much as it is ostentatious, is also indubitubly sincere: there's a viscerality to watching, looking, reading something campy, a level of involvement that encompasses everyone involved (artist, audience, cast/crew) and enunciates you're part of some ridiculous process, whatever you relation to it is; even if you know where the story is going you don't care as much as being part of its unraveling.

Arguably, this means campiness can be just as sadistic as it is tender. One of the reasons we love movies--hell, any kind of dramatic excursion--is because we love drama. We love to watch people suffer, to put it bluntly, because suffering is the threshold to any/every form of personal growth. That's the structure of storytelling. It's a centering device that's just as remedial as it is pleasurable: someone is antagonized by some form of physical/mental/circumstantial duress, goes through agony, and gets to a point of resolution by story's end. That extrapolation of resolution is the basis of any narrative framework, and camp's address of that irreducible form and its preposterousness gives it a peculiar emotional effect, something that's equal parts comedic and dramaturgical. Nina goes through hell and it's just so much goddamn fun to watch her squirm because we know whatever happens, she's going to get somewhere; whatever the metamorphosis is, it's going to be a really fun ride.

Everything about Black Swan exudes camp: Nina's over-virginal timidity; her mother's doting, equal parts jealousy, vampirism and haphazard clinging to her maternal identity; Cassel's hypersexual Thomas, complete with brilliant bravado (Cassel may be the best part of the film, actually ...he knows exactly what's going on, ie: why he was cast and what the film wants to accomplish, and performs everything to perfection); Lily the dark doppelganger who dresses in black, takes drugs and, gasp, even has a tattoo! Everything balances between prime utility and cliche, and accentuates the overblown teetering of Nina between reality and delusion. That's the goal of camp: it's art and artifice combined, and Black Swan, while not at all subtly, reinforces that notion throughout its running time.


Pompous tangent that over-intellectualizes Aronofsky:

Spoiler

The reverse-anthropromorphism in the film is a decidedly French digression of the same sentiment, and offers a similar conclusion: the uncovering and utility of cliches reckons humanity with, well, its own humanity, and what a foreign concept the "human" is to the world around us; it forces us to metamorphosize into something beyond what our own knowledge has made us identify with. A similar cathartic principle is found in art, and Aronofksy alludes to that in the film's climax; Nina has lost herself by becoming other, becoming animal, and henceforth dismanteld the rigid, formal process and its residual anxieties in the process. Something tells me, however, Aronofsky wasn't looking that deeply into things; he's more interested in the credibility of camp when amalgamated with certain flourishes, even if the outcome, like his application of body-horror, can be borderline farcical sometimes. Then again, that's kind of the point...

That being said, the final fifteen minutes are pure hilarity, absolutely monumental filmmaking. Aronofsky is a guy I love to hate--The Fountain is on the 'to-be-watched' list but even after I enjoyed this so much I retain much trepidation--but he did everything perfectly here: the reversal of psychoses between acts, the laugh-out-loud funny juxtaposition between her suitor in human form ('what the fuck?') and grotesque meta-human swan form ('...Hey.'), and especially how as the performance reaches its climax the real and the delusional become more and more differentiated (Lily is suddenly non-demonized; Nina practically rapes Thomas after Act Two). My only criticism is the very end, and the reapplication of Nina's pursuit of perfection; sure, it intertwines with the so-called tragedy of the situation--the performance/transformation/movie is now over, so now Nina must die, or she doesn't want to go the way of the Winona and hence sacrifices herself for the sake of art (paging The Wrestler)--but i think I would've given the film an A+ had Aronofsky sufficed to just have Nina survive and be a sexpot leading lady we see flashes of throughout. Obviously, we're not going to see that; the ending we were given was inescapable, for better or worse.

You can tell Aronofsky restrains himself sometimes, and occasionally comes close to ruining the film's delicate balance (the masturbation sequence, complete with de Palma-esque reveal of the mother in the room comes dangerously close to throwing everything in the completely overblwon) but he keeps himself in check. Portman is an adept leading lady, her timidity perhaps a little too trying at times, and Kunis does what she needs to do. As stated before, Cassel is brilliant in his own haughty, omniscient little way, and Barbara Hershey gave my dad the creeps (he apparently had a huge thing for her back in the day). I'm happy I saw this with my family for our post-christmas ritual, complete with my dad blithely asking what "rolling" was in the night-out sequence, and my mom being horrified by Kunis' cunnilingual expertise. The audience I saw it with couldn't decide what to be more terrified by, the psychological distress or the cracks, slits and pops of broken finger nails and torn skin, and the elderly crowd was sickened by the climax happened. All in all, it was a delightfully lurid experience, as camp should be. I'm very interested to see where Aronofsky goes next.

[mfunk9786]

The entire idea of this film is to be blunt and overly visceral

[Mr. Ned]

Yes it is; and after dealing with a sibling who was more interest trying to pry out some implicit criticism of ballet as a misogynist institution and the countless needlings from friends about its bluntness being ridiculous and stupid a longwinded and self-indulgent posting on a message board was the only way of letting everybody know I'm right.

[JMULL222]

Well in that case, we might as well just close the thread now.

[domino harvey]

dealing with a sibling who was more interest trying to pry out some implicit criticism of ballet as a misogynist institution

Man, no offense, but lol forever @ your sibling

[James Mills]

You guys don't think there's some Freudian undertones? I think the idea that even an art dominated by females is still overlooked by a male (a womanizing asshole at that) has some implications of misogynistic critique. Didn't DA even allude to this in an interview?

I guess it's up in the air whether or not the idea is targeted directly at ballet. fwiw, it was the convolution of such ideas that are played with but never incised that I had some reservations with

[ambrose]

Call that a port de bras?

Natalie Portman needs to work on her port de bras. I really have a problem with this film using an actress, not a dancer, to play Nina: the director seems to think that, in a few months, you can learn a profession that it takes years just to understand, let alone be good at. And in the film, Nina is supposed to be awesome.

This is a very lazy movie, featuring every ballet cliche going. If you want to look at the dark side of ballet, do it properly, don't just give us shots of a ballerina suddenly vomiting. Nina's mother was beyond the cliche of a ballet mum – she was a psychopath. And the only people who looked like they were having a good time were the ones having sex.

The ballet movies that dancers go back to are the ones that have had great dancers in them, like Mikhail Baryshnikov, Moira Shearer, Roland Petit and Zizi Jeanmaire. Ballet isn't something you can just add on. The characters are important because they're dancers – and if they aren't very good ones, it doesn't make sense.

[Duncan Hopper]

There's been incredible feedback on Twitter, but what most people are saying is: don't worry about the ballet – go for the great lesbian action and the horror.

[Michael Kerpan]

There's been incredible feedback on Twitter, but what most people are saying is: don't worry about the ballet – go for the great lesbian action and the horror.

You forgot to give props to Cassa Poncho (Ballet Black)

[ambrose]

There's been incredible feedback on Twitter, but what most people are saying is: don't worry about the ballet – go for the great lesbian action and the horror.

You forgot to give props to Cassa Poncho (Ballet Black)

I will instead Mr.Kerpan.

Of Trinidadian and British parents, Cassa trained at the Royal Academy of Dance, gaining a degree in classical ballet from Durham University. Upon graduating in 2001, she founded Ballet Black in order to provide role models to young, aspiring black and Asian dancers. A year later, she opened the Ballet Black Junior School in Shepherd's Bush and in 2004, began the BB Associate Programme, which currently has over two hundred members. Cassa is also a graduate of the 2009 National Theatre cultural leadership programme, Step Change. Since starting the Company, she has commissioned work from many different choreographers, including Liam Scarlett, Richard Alston, Christopher Marney, Antonia Franceschi, Martin Lawrance, Shobana Jeyasingh, Henri Oguike, Christopher Hampson and Will Tuckett. In January 2010, Ballet Black won the Critics’ Circle National Dance Award for Outstanding Company of 2009.

[James Mills]

I'm still surprised that so many of you thought the ballet scenes were good... one of my biggest problems with the film was the choreography, lack of wide shots during the choreography, and the general over-editing of dance scenes. I think I said the same thing in my review; that they felt somewhat "lazy" and rushed.

To say that it would have been better to simply get a dancer to play Nina is absurd to me though. I thought Portman was fantastic and seemed to have the mannerisms and motions of a professional ballet dancer down, but maybe wasn't given the proper direction to show it off.

[Tom Hagen]

lack of wide shots during the choreography, and the general over-editing of dance scenes. I think I said the same thing in my review

That may have had a bit to do with the fact that this was a pyschological thriller and not a classic-period musical or dance film.

[James Mills]

lack of wide shots during the choreography, and the general over-editing of dance scenes. I think I said the same thing in my review

That may have had a bit to do with the fact that this was a pyschological thriller and not a classic-period musical or dance film.

Word, but it wouldn't have hurt to add a few more elaborate dance sequences and practices to the beginning to incite more interest into the subject matter.

[LQ]

lack of wide shots during the choreography, and the general over-editing of dance scenes. I think I said the same thing in my review

That may have had a bit to do with the fact that this was a pyschological thriller and not a classic-period musical or dance film.

Word, but it wouldn't have hurt to add a few more elaborate dance sequences and practices to the beginning to incite more interest into the subject matter.

I was immediately engrossed in the subject matter precisely because Aronofsky chose to linger on the seldom-seen-in-cinema details of ballet. Hearing breaths fall heavy in the air from exertion, seeing the bandaged toes, the shoes cracked open and beaten into submission, was quite a fascinating change of pace from watching a picture-perfect dance interlude from a safe distance.

[domino harvey]

It is a film about the dancer, not the dance, and Aronofsky deftly operates around his star's limitations as a dancer. As someone also closely famliar with dance, I don't mind saying that the linked
editorial is a sour grape load of shit