Darren Aronofsky ’s Black Swan has been pulling in the plaudits on the picture show fete lap , but Greg Christie of Twitch was less than impressed . Christie see the danseuse thriller at the Philadelphia Film Festival , gird with his review flask .
[ This is your * SPOILER * Warning folk music , there are some detail of the film given away below , if you want to go in new , come back after Christmas ! ]
There are times in life where you come to question the world around you and whether it even exists , or if everything is just a part of your skewed imagination . Watching Black Swan was most sure enough one of those experience . I left the theater feeling like a character from a John Paul Sartre novel . I was timid of my surroundings and unable to touch to my equal and battle a cruel case of nausea . It was as if a curtain was pulled back and an whole new world was revealed . Or I may have just taken one too many sip from the magical flaskful .
Black Swan is about the extremes artists and performers go to make their artwork , whole losing themselves and all rational perception of the domain around them in the process . But it was n’t the history of one social dancer ’s hair-raising journeying to embody the Black Swan of Swan Lake that result me mixed-up . No , it ’s the fact that every reputable critic seems to think this is some character of chef-d’oeuvre .
I ’m simply dumbfounded and I really require to know , what blooming version of Black Swan did everyone else in the world see ?
Before I begin this reassessment , I ’d just like to say that Black Swan is the perfect film to stumble in drunk from a horrifically awkward shiva on a cold and showery Thursday night . Why ? Because this is without a doubt , one of the individual most idiotic cinematic experiences of late retentivity , and I ’m bloody for sure beaming I was dependable and intoxicated to well appreciate it .
Essentially , Black Swan is Repulsion & Perfect Blue by agency of Showgirls with heavy influences of Brian De Palma & Kenneth Anger thrown in for good measure . In fact , I think I could easily compare this to the work of the Kuchar Brothers as well . With a combination like that , this should act as like gangbusters for the cult stage set . The problem is that this is n’t nearly as intelligent of a mindfuck as Repulsion or Perfect Blue . It hear to be a slow burn but come across as just plain dull for the first minute . Until Natalie Portman starts to plough into a fucking Swan at the end of Act 2 , closely every pipeline of talks and every character is about as cliché as they come . And for all of the hokey dialogue and cheesy gender , it miss the guilty pleasure thrills of Showgirls or the full on psychedelic imaging of Mr. Anger . A fellow coder and critic told me this was utterly mean to be demand within the same mineral vein of a Verhoeven film . So it ’s Showgirls without tits ? What the fuck is the point of that ?
Aronofsky has taken all of the dear will earned from the devastating power and subtly of The Wrestler and bobble it on a one-half baked Meleagris gallopavo that outstrip even The Fountain ’s overwrought melodrama .
Nina ( Natalie Portman ) is a fragile and meek ballet social dancer work for one of New York ’s most elect companies . She ’s a perfectionist and the daughter of a loving , yet revengeful and overbearing female parent , a former professional dancer who present up her calling when she had her first child . Nina ’s mom is now reliving her life vicariously through her daughter .
Nina has been with the company for a identification number of years and hopes to become a star performing artist . Winona Ryder spiel Beth , the companionship ’s mature queen of the stage . She ’s a pompous diva prostrate to temper tantrum and a former plaything for troupe managing director , Thomas ( Vincent Cassel ) . When Tom force Beth into retirement , she sky out , calls Nina a harlot , and hear to entrust suicide .
Nina is selected to replace Beth as the star of Swan Lake , but she ’s simply too dainty and pure to act the two-fold character of both the White and Black Swan . The other young woman in the troupe grow to hate Nina , particularly Lilly ( Mila Kunis ) , a wild child advantageously suited to play the Black Swan who tries everything she can to smash her reputation and steal the part .
Thomas uses his conductor role to try and fuck the virginal Nina . He continues to force her past her boundaries to make her become the Black Swan . All that ’s miss is a circuit saltation and a crazy sex activity scene in a pool .
We learn that Nina may or may not have a foresightful story of serious , self - destructive , obsessional compulsive behavior . The pressure placed on her by her mother and the demands of being a dancer has put Nina on the route to fill in dementia long ago .
In gain to all of this , there ’s a fare share of silly , hallucinatory physical structure repugnance . Nina pulls out toenails and discovers deep cuts and bruise . She sees dark and disturbed versions of herself and her madden mother on the faces of alien . There are even scenes where Nina ’s reflexion in mirrors take on a life of their own . Essentially , when we see things through Nina ’s fractured perspective , it all flirt out like any generic J - Horror film . There are a surprising amount of cheap and pointless jump panic that palpate out of position . Any compare other critic are cook to Cronenberg are completely unwarranted .
When Nina lastly lose her mind in the final 15 minute , the film goes off the runway and becomes a camp fest that had this critic chuckling nonstop . And yes , Nina actually transmute into a infernal blooming smuggled swan via bad CG morphing effects mid performance . The ending and its message is nearly identical to The Wrestler without any of the same grace or beauty , ironic for a film about concert dance . This was shot within the same vein as The Wrestler as well . It was shoot on the same film stock with the same camera by the same DP . This is a batshit mad melodrama handled as if it were picture palace verité , a unearthly choice that lead to an even eldritch tonus . The sudden descent into utter folly is on par with Leonardo DiCaprio ’s TV biz violent disorder in The Beach .
Natalie Portman masturbates , makes out with another woman , and has Mila Kunis go down on her while a crazed and supercilious mother is screaming blinking murder outside and trying to pick apart down the bedroom door . This should have been good trashy merriment , but everyone is still tire out their clothes and everything is so awkwardly staged and direct that it is n’t nearly as hot or sport as it sound . And holy shit , there ’s even an galvanizing guitar whammy Riffian performing when Portman touch herself for the first time , I kid you not !
Portman ’s dedication to learning concert dance for the film is telling , but I ca n’t fathom the people who claim that her performance is an early contender for the Oscar wash . If this is supposed to be the intrepid and most avant-garde performance of an actress this year , I ’d like to say that Elizabeth Berkeley was better over a decade ago and you obviously have n’t seen Amanda Fuller in Red , White , and Blue .
I have to imagine that Aronofsky was play this for laughter from the beginning , gauge from the other review , I know that 75 % of everyone here is going to violently disagree with me but Black Swan is a campy and unbelievably silly psychological B movie that feels like early 70 ’s euro codswallop , once again , albeit , without the trash . Thankfully , the whisky helped .
This article originally appear onTwitch .
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