Black Swan (Aronofsky, 2010)

Last updated on: January 31, 2015 at 9:27 pm by Dan Mohr

Black Swan (Aronofsky, 2010) 2015-01-31T21:27:11-05:00 Dan Mohr

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Natalie Portman in Black Swan

I hereby plead guilty to catching up on awards-season titles…

Were he still alive today, I can’t help thinking that Black Swan would’ve been the late Japanese playwright, melodramatist and exhibitionist Yukio Mishima’s all-time favorite movie…and I also recall how the costume designer Eiko Ishioka once mentioned Mishima’s aesthetics were “in very poor taste.”

Black Swan‘s cinematic allusions are numerous. It’s already been compared with The Red Shoes and All About Eve (in terms of actual quality, IMO that’s an insult to both aforementioned titles). For being a supposedly seminal cinematic showcase for ballet, after it was over I was stunned by how little actual dancing I felt I’d witnessed over the previous two hours, which I lay entirely on Darren Aronofsky’s failings as a director. Aronofsky has two ways of shooting the dancing sequences: either from extremely distant longshots which obscure any detail of the dancers’ bodies, or in suffocating handheld closeups which whirl and pirouette around the dancers as if they’re one of the company, but take no time or space to observe the dancers’ full range of movement (these shots mainly seem to be screaming, “Look at me! Look at how dynamically we’re moving the camera!”) Aronofsky seems completely uninterested in the beauty and the poetry of dancers’ bodies: their grace, their discipline, their expressiveness. Black Swan doesn’t even begin to capture a shred of the beauty of the art of dancing found in any of Gene Kelly’s musicals, or for that matter Baz Luhrmann’s Strictly Ballroom.

Aronofsky’s latest has also been compared to Cronenberg’s metaphysical fixation with gore and Haneke’s theater of cruelty, which might be more accurate; but Black Swan is nowhere as psychologically exploratory or dramatically accomplished a film as Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers or Haneke’s The Piano Teacher (viewers who rave that Natalie Portman gives a “bravura” performance in Black Swan should have a look at Isabelle Huppert’s lead role in The Piano Teacher for an example of true audacity and bravery in acting).

As I watched Black Swan, I tried to fathom what other directorial approaches might’ve been taken with the movie in order for it to work as enjoyable entertainment on any level (I know for sure that Aronofsky’s ostentatiously gritty and claustrophobic handheld ‘Dogme 95’ knockoff isn’t it). I wondered if someone like Todd Haynes might’ve been able to apply the same level of sleek stylishness or wry irony that he used to such devastatingly resonant effects in Far From Heaven. And then the old adage occurred to me: it’s possible to make a bad movie from a good screenplay, but it’s impossible to make a good movie from a bad screenplay.

And Black Swan‘s screenplay is downright lousy – just extraordinarily trite. The very story conception is a crock. Natalie Portman plays a twenty-something professional dancer with the psychology and emotions of a thirteen-year-old child, plus a bedroom filled with adorable stuffed animals, still living with her domineering mother, but lo and behold A. in downtown New York City and B. performing in one of the world’s most competitive and prestigious ballet troupes (uh, right). And the audience is supposed to be blown away by Portman’s “giving herself over completely” to a character that’s no deeper or more complex than the one Tippi Hedren played in Alfred Hitchcock’s campy psychodrama Marnie from 1964. Yup, folks, this is bold new psychological territory never before seen on the screen! Portman’s opaque, two-dimensional character, with her abstract need to “be perfect”, isn’t nearly as likeable or touching as Sissy Spacek’s character in De Palma’s Carrie, nor is Portman’s acting in Black Swan as capable of earning the audience’s pathos as Spacek’s amazing performance in De Palma’s movie.

Aronofsky’s only thematic points in Black Swan seem to be: human beings are swine, except for when they achieve perfection through art. Like Pasolini and Teorema or Peckinpah and Straw Dogs, Aronofsky is completely intent on illustrating a thesis by using his characters as stick figures, and thereby allowing himself to discover nothing organically – and certainly not dramatically – in the process of making his movie. From the first ten minutes of the film onwards, I suspected the movie’s designs were out to demonstrate that there was no one in the entirety of New York City (even in the rarified, supremely accomplished world of professional dance) that wasn’t an odious pig; the cartoonishly nasty supporting turns by Vincent Cassel, Barbara Hershey and Winona Ryder did nothing to prove me wrong. (After having seen Dancer in the Dark, if anyone had told me that Black Swan was also directed by Lars von Trier, thematically and stylistically, I honestly wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference.)

Black Swan is unquestionably a new member of the Movies That Make You Want to Take a Shower Immediately After You See Them category. My spouse – who loathed the film even more than I did – drew an instant comparison to Tommy Wiseau’s The Room (!): “It’s also full of the kind of sex scenes that make you never want to have sex again.” As for Aronofsky’s other preoccupations: I watched stupefying scenes like Portman riding on a subway while an older businessman sitting across from her makes obscene facial gestures at her and grabs his crotch (while Portman just looks away, but stays seated), or during the final “grand performance” at the movie’s end, when Portman’s sexually-repressed character glances over and watches Mila Kunis’ wild-and-free California gal standing in the wings with a male dancer and rubbing his privates (mid-performance? How professional!), and I kept thinking, “what the fuck is going on in this movie!?” (On the basis of how this movie only views sex and eroticism as something foul and lurid, I sincerely hope to never run into Darren Aronofsky wearing a trenchcoat in a supermarket aisle in my lifetime.)

Even the movie’s sound design sucked, with its pathetically hokey “boo!” effects which I suspect were stolen out of the Haunted House ride at Disney World. And the “state of the art” digital FX suggesting Portman’s character’s mental instability were Twilight Zone schlocky – but the oh-so-seriously-impassioned Black Swan sure as hell isn’t as much fun (nor as well-made in any aspect) as any given episode of the original, blessedly tongue-in-cheek Twilight Zone TV series.

For the life of me, I don’t know why I didn’t hate Black Swan more. Maybe I was too bored by how mind-numbingly banal and mediocre it was to be profoundly appalled. And Mila Kunis as the stereotypical west-coast party girl was fine, but I liked her a lot more in Forgetting Sarah Marshall…hell, I liked everyone in and everything about Forgetting Sarah Marshall a great deal more than Black Swan.

–Dan Mohr

This review was originally posted at the Cinevox discussion board. It is reprinted here with the permission of the author.

Previous Post

January 7, 2011

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Jackson, 2001)

Next Post

January 21, 2011 No Strings Attached (Reitman, 2011)

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category 10 Years Later 1999 Top 5 2007 Top 10 2008 Favorite Discoveries 2008 Top 10 2009 Favorite Discoveries 2009 Top 10 2010 Favorite Discoveries 2010 Top 10 2011 Top 10 2012 Top Ten 2013 Top Ten 2014 Top Ten Best Picture Winners Christian Spotlight on Entertainment Christianity Today Coming Soon Disclosure Disclosure--AS Disclosure--Book Disclosure--DVDS Disclosure--SEOL Disclosure--Travel Dissenting Opinion Elsewhere Emergenetics Essays Featured Film Fest DC--2014 Film Festivals Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2010 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2011 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2012 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2013 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2014 Headline Interviews Laura on the Oscar Winners Podcasts Quick Impressions Reviews RiverRun Film Festival 2014 Television The Criterion Collection The Thin Place To Stream or Not to Stream? Top 10s and Other Lists Toronto International Film Festival 2009 Toronto International Film Festival 2010 Toronto International Film Festival 2011 Toronto International Film Festival 2012 Toronto International Film Festival 2013 Toronto International Film Festival 2014 Uncategorized Video Virginia Film Festival 2011 Virginia Film Festival 2013 Women's Film Festival 2012

Select a Month February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

According to 1 Peter, believers are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, and what else?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Salt of the earth A holy nation, God's special possession A light to the world Ambassadors for Christ