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Movie Discussion/Review 6-2-11

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So I watched Black Swan and here is my review and then I'll check how it compares to the predictions:

Let's do this!

SPOILER ALERT!!



I'm thinking I probably liked this more than you guys are guessing.



Okay we have this descent into madness. It is being presented as very real, literal, detailed hallucinations. This is not the first movie to do that and it is always an iffy proposition for me but in this case I was able to go with it. I connect on some level with artistic passion and fixation. A lifetime of dreams are suddenly coming true - but the pressure cooker circumstances of the dickish director and the overbearing mother and the bitchy other dancers - combined with Nina's fragile personality and physical problems and state of semi-starvation - I had no trouble buying into the premise that it could lead to a breakdown as opening night relentlessly approaches. People really do go mad.

I liked the artsy stuff. There are different demands for the white swan and the black swan and she has to find the passionate black swan inside her repressed psyche. I can really see that. (I was a little skeptical that she would ever be awarded the role in the first place, given the director's misgivings but I can rationalize that). So that became a major component of her delusions: a literal transformation into the black swan.

And it was all so well presented. I mean, in some ways, this movie could have been Showgirls - but the performance of Natalie Portman was very convincing and the way those factors contributing to her madness were laid out - it worked for me.

So there we go. I am really enjoying this movie and we are almost all the way through.

Then the ending.

There was a big gaping problem with the ending for me and that was simply: the blood. If I accept that she is not going to lose consciousness from blood loss, there is still the fact that she was bleeding all over this lily white tutu - and no one notices. The scene where someone finally does notice was comical. They run up to her and congratulate her for her great performance (we'll forget about that little faceplant from Act 1) and only then do they suddenly notice that her torso is smeared with gore and it's like, "But look!"

I find it very hard to just shrug off what happened there. It was bad. The only question is, how heavily does it factor into my all-important rating? Sure it was just one small detail in a whole big movie - but it was such a pivotal climactic detail.

It reminds me in some ways of Shutter Island which was a fairly interesting watchable journey the whole way through with a completely ridiculous detail at the end. The thing about Shutter Island though was that that detail changed the meaning of everything that had happened up until that point and I end up with a thumbs down for the whole movie. In Black Swan that was not the case. It was an isolated detail. The preceding descent into madness maintains its integrity.

But it was such a glaring thing at such an important juncture.

I end up with a rating of 6.9 out of 10.
 
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