Pbenjay's Blog

Peter and I watched Black Swan the other  night and about half-way through it I turned to him and said, “well isn’t this just a nasty little movie”.  Meaning it was getting darker and darker as Nina slip-slided into the black abyss of madness.  But as we know Aronofsky likes dark movies;  after all he has directed such onyx gems as Pi, Requiem for a Dream and The Wrestler.

His movies are also intensely personal, hinging on the performance of its lead.  Fortunately for all of us, as in the recent movie, The Wrestler and Natalie Portman in Black Swan, we’re not disappointed.  Portman took on an extremely difficult role. She dropped 20 lbs to attain the bone-protruding physique of a ballerina, learned to move her body with the grace of a dancer and portrayed a mad young woman.

Her mental illness was apparent right from the beginning of the movie.  She was driven to perfection,obsessive AND had a crazy mother.  The two of them lived in a strange and reclusive  symbiotic world.  Barbara Hershey was clearly living in a distorted reality and her dashed ambitions as a former ballerina found fertile ground in her daughter’s vulnerability.

So in the end, it was not a movie about Swan Lake, it was not a movie about the life of a ballerina, it wasn’t a movie about a stage mother and an aspiring daughter – No! It was a movie about madness and the disintegration of a person.  A theme not unknown to movie-goers;  think  The Shining, Taxi Driver, The Aviator and A Beautiful Mind.

Here’s a question/thought;  It was extremely difficult at times to discern what was real and what was not in the movie similar to Inception and is that a good thing or a bad thing?  Should the audience walk out of a film wondering what they actually saw?  True, it makes for discussion post viewing but……?  Would love comments on this!

I AM the Black Swan

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