One would have a hard time finding a genre in which to fit Black Swan.  Indy drama, while a fitting title when viewing a trailer of the film, simply won’t do when one actually sees the drama in this film is quite unusual.  You could try to mark it as a horror film.  There is definitely blood, shock value and some very disturbing images.  But to call this a horror film would diminish the message the movie is trying to convey: the nightmare one lives when dealing with obsession run amok.

Natalie Portman does a great job as the frigid, tight-ass white swan of the film who is struggling to release her darker side.  What’s at stake?  The leading role in the second most well-known ballet there is.  Mila Kunis also does well as the supposed black swan.  But you expect a little more competitiveness from her, and don’t get it.  There’s no backstabbing, sabotaging or really any kind of negative energy cast in the direction of the always paranoid Portman.  On the contrary, Kunis spends the movie trying to show us just how much of a problem she doesn’t have with Portman’s character.  For being the black swan, she isn’t much of a bitch.

But the film doesn’t leave much to the imagination in utilizing the light/dark aspect of the ballet.  If there is something bad to be said about this film, it’s that you don’t get to draw the parallels for yourself. It’s not as obvious as Star Wars, but it’s not far off.  The comparison is right there in front of you, forcing to you acknowledge it.

But it should be noted the main theme of the film was not good v. bad, so one wants to forgive this bludgeoning cliche.  Where the movie is really great is inside the mind of Portman’s character (okay, I’ll look her name up, it’s Nina.  I’ll call her Nina from now on).  Having dabbled very lightly with obsessive-compulsive behavior, I really enjoyed seeing a visualization of the absolute nightmare experienced by Nina throughout the film.  Nina’s horrors were manifested several ways including self mutilation, hallucination and eventually losing all touch with reality and creating a self-destructive mind-set that would be her undoing.  Fear was the driving force of the movie.  Before Nina even got the part she was scared of her competition, scared of her mother and mostly scared of failure.

Driving this fear was what seemed at times to be a living ghost, Nina’s predecessor.  Having slipped over the edge herself, Winona Rider’s character, Beth, seems intent on ruining any enjoyment Nina might get from her dancing.  But Nina doesn’t seem to understand what’s good for her.  Her morbid fascination of Beth’s emotional decline keeps Nina from shutting Beth’s negative energy out for good.  It’s as if she can see exactly what direction she’s heading toward, but is too obsessed with her drive for perfection to do anything about it.

It is never clear whether Nina gets the part because she’s the best, or because the director was trying to quash a possible sexual harassment suit.  The viewer is left to hypothesize as to what her ability really is.  There is no doubt she is a technically sound dancer, but her psyche as well as her inability to shut out her emotions are her biggest enemy.  By the end of the film, she is such a wreck that you wonder if she’s even capable of completing a single performance.

The violence in the film has been criticized as gratuitous, but it was necessary to show how these emotional problems can come through in physical form.  I hate metaphor as much as the next red-blooded American, but those physical wounds were representative of Nina’s damaged interior, culminating in the final moments when she stabs herself in the stomach while hallucinating.  The obsessiveness that got her the perfect performance she wanted so bad also got her killed (or did she make it?  I can’t remember now).

So, where does this behavior come from?  Why, the parents of course.  In this case, it’s just the mother, but as a strict Freudian I believe it’s important that we all find something about us that is wrong and blame it on our parents.  In this case, it is obvious to see where Nina gets her behavior.  Her mother’s portraits of her daughter as well as her violent mood swings (including an attempt to entrap her daughter when she feels Nina has strayed to far) lends a creepy reality to this kind of cyclical behavior.  Through her mother, we can already see where Nina will be in thirty years.

So to sum things up, I give this a definite go-ahead.  I doubt it will win best picture because it did seem to lay things on pretty thick.  But if you can stomach it, I highly recommend this film as a great example of a damaged interior to a beautiful body.  Oh yeah, and there’s a great lesbian scene.

Whence I return we will discuss how the world was saved from the clutches of Hitler by a foppish Aussie with a crooked nose.  Until then.

Alouishis

I like a good mind-fuck movie.  Charlie Kaufman is one of my favorite authors and I’m probably one of the few people who thinks Vanilla Sky was a good movie.   So I was quite disappointed to get halfway through Inception with my mind still unmolested.  It wasn’t until there was about 30 minutes left in the film that I realized what this movie was: a solid action film with a cool premise.

It’s probably important at this point to remember what our goal here is; to pick the best picture of the year.  The bar is set higher and had I left it at its usual height, Inception would receive the go-ahead as an entertaining, visually awe-inspiring, all around well-made film.  But we are looking for the best.  Not just the best action film, but the best film, period.

Inception is the best action movie I’ve seen this year.  But when compared to films from all categories, it makes a strong argument against having ten best film nominations.  Merely a solid movie isn’t what belongs in the best picture category, we must be reaching higher than that and rarely does a year goes by when there are ten exceptional films.  Despite what you may have heard, there are fewer major motion pictures made nowadays than there were fifty years ago.  If the number of total films is decreasing, increasing the best picture nominess will introduce mediocrity to the award and drag the truly deserving films into a muddled group wherein voters are forced to spread their limited focus amongst a greater amount of films.  The idea of a nomination is to narrow focus in order to give a better opportunity to judge each subject.

The idea behind expanding the number of best picture nominees was to create more interest and viewership by including the kinds of films that are usually left out of the running.  Animated films are the most commonly used example of this.  Because of the expansion, Toy Story 3 was able to sneak in to the pool.  But this doesn’t fix what I agree is a problem within the nominating process.  Inception’s nomination only makes it very slightly more likely it will win.  The problem lies in what we define to be a great film, or that we have one at all.  Too often we see the same formula used in a best-picture-nominated films.  Familiar stories of triumph in spite of the odds and overcoming one’s personal demons have been packaged differently over the years.  But they’ve all been made with one goal in mind, to win best picture.

So why not Inception?  Am I treating it unfairly because I feel I was deceived as to what the actual nature of the film was supposed to be?  I will admit I was ready to write off the film halfway through when I realized it wasn’t what I was hoping for, but I think I rebounded quickly enough to give it a fair shake.  I also think it warrants a discussion on trailers creating false expectations, but that’s another discussion for another time.

In the end the problem is the film has no lasting power. The plot is fine and there is a great tension build-up that resolves itself well in the end.  But the acting left something to be desired, and I don’t think the characters were developed in a way that made me care about them.  Their fate is tied in with the fate of the film.  If you don’t care what happens to the characters, why the hell are you watching?

I also think the writer and director left a lot on the table in dealing with the possibilities one encounters in the dream-state.  I got the feeling the director was primarily interested in the ways the physical world could be twisted in using the in-dream premise, as if it served solely as a device for creating cool visual effects (don’t get me wrong, they were really cool).  But what it really felt like was a bunch of actors standing in front of a green screen.  They were too self-assured in their dreams.  Everything was so well defined, both visually and situationally.  There wasn’t that feeling of uncertainty and inherent fear one gets while dreaming.  It might not be possible to emulate such a sensation whilst driving the plot of the film.

Maybe that’s why the most successful dream sequences don’t enhance a story so much as they give context and insight into the subject’s frame of mind (for a great example of a dream sequence doing both, I point you to the second season finale of The Sopranos).  I give the director credit for his efforts.  Perhaps Mr. Nolan did get robbed in the best director category.  There are certainly a lot of people who disagree with my assessment.  But to me, Inception had all the feeling of a $200k Mercedes that only ever gets driven to pick up the groceries; great premise under utilized.

I’ll be back, if you’ll have me.  Next up, my life long dream of becoming a ballerina is crushed by the brutal reality of a relentless, winner-take-all blood sport.

Alouishis