King Darren: Black Swan

This is the third in my 2023 bi-monthly series rewatching the films of Darren Aronofsky (all except The Fountain and The Wrestler, which I had recently rewatched) in the year after he became the first director to direct two films I ranked #1 of the year.

Watching 2010's Black Swan, I was struck by the notion that this is easily Darren Aronofsky's most sophisticated film. His most prestigious. 

Part of that is the subject matter, to be sure. Ballet is the highest of high art, as notably contrasted with subject matter of The Wrestler -- which was once meant to be part of the same movie, a very long and too-stuffed movie, as Black Swan. It gets easy prestige points in the same way that Todd Field's Tar gets easy prestige points. 

But there's also something clean and straightforward about the storytelling, even as it presents us with doppelgangers and other unsettling images of body horror. It's a fairly straightforward psychodrama getting inside the head of a dancer who doubts herself.

And that's why I think it took me 13 years to watch it a second time.

Unlike Tar, there's very little wild and unexplained in Black Swan. He'd correct for this in a major way in his next film about a woman in torment, 2017's mother! But in Black Swan, I have to say it all seems a little obvious, a little on the nose, a little too literal.

Let's break it down.

Black Swan is about a dancer (Natalie Portman) who desires the role of the Swan Queen in the ballet Swan Lake. That ballet is about a woman who turns into a swan, and the role requires a dancer to play both a pure, unblemished white swan and a dark, wild black swan. It requires two very different styles of dance, and is therefore challenging, especially for a technically precise dancer like Nina Sayers.

And so, in the movie, Nina both shows signs of turning into a swan, and dealing with another character (Mila Kunis' Lilly) who represents her dark side, in whom she sometimes sees her own face, who may not actually exist depending on how you interpret the events of the film. (There's a lot of David Fincher's Fight Club in this film.)

Now, in case you think I'm coming down hard on Black Swan, let me say this: the way it does all these things is excellent. Any bit of body horror in the film -- I am especially skeeved out by the scene where Nina starts to peel back a large strip of skin from her finger -- is tremendous. The very art of ballet puts its dancers in a constant state of body horror, not only having to maintain their ridiculously skimpy weight (Nina is bulimic), but in the ways their toes are forever on the verge of being crushed and destroyed.

(TMI, possibly -- any time I see someone's toes imperiled, it gives me a sympathetic shrinking of my testicles, accompanied by an uncomfortable throbbing. That happened throughout Black Swan.)

The themes themselves, though? Maybe a little obvious.

It might be the first time Aronofsky had done anything that could be described that way. Pi was obviously a burst of original thinking and design, if a little rough around the edges -- unsurprising for a director's first film. The horrors of drugs might not have been anything new to the cinema, but they were certainly new the way Aronofsky dealt with them in Requiem for a Dream, endlessly confronting and impossible to watch. The Fountain is just kind of wackadoodle from top to bottom. Then The Wrestler is a completely unexpected left turn from the director, a realistic contemplation of an aging male athlete with health problems who is trying to make up for neglecting his daughter.

I may be conflating Black Swan with films that came after it, but I just feel like I've seen a lot of films about caustic relationships between women where the second woman might in some way be the doppelganger of the first. Bergman's Persona is the obvious template for something like this. I won't list all the other instances, especially since some of them do come after Black Swan. But even in a film I unambiguously love, Vanilla Sky, the part where the personalities of Penelope Cruz and Cameron Diaz blend with one another, and Tom Cruise can't tell which is which, feel a little hacky to me. (I should also say that I don't think it felt as obvious to me when I first saw it as it does now.)

Again, I'm making this criticism within the context of really liking the film. I gave it four stars on Letterboxd (retroactively) and I stand by that star rating. But it's just this is my explanation for why a film that is possibly Aronofsky's most respected, and with good reason, isn't in the top half of the director's eight films as far as I am concerned. 

Two observations about other cast members:

1) It was funny to see Vincent Cassel, because he had just been in Asterix & Obelix: The Middle Kingdom, which I saw the night before. If I were going to continue making comparisons to Tar, he'd be the focus of them, as he's basically this film's Lydia Tar -- or would have the chance to be if he were the central character.

2) It was great to see Winona Ryder at a time when she found herself -- very much like the character Beth she plays -- without a clear place in the only industry she had known since she was a teenager. I have to wonder if it was difficult for Ryder to play this part, which does very well, as she's a hot mess in all her scenes. At the time she played this role, she hadn't technically been put out to pasture -- in fact, she was in four films the year before. But it had been eight years since Mr. Deeds in 2002 when she was last considered the right person to play a romantic lead in a film, and by 2010 she had definitely been replaced by younger actors like Portman. Now in her late 30s rather than her early 30s, she might be giving us real anger in the scene where she destroys her dressing room and screams "What?" at Nina. Well, this story has a happy ending as Ryder has had a major comeback in Stranger Things and once again played a rom-com lead in the nice Keanu Reeves film Destination Wedding in 2018. Next up she has two projects that capitalize on her earliest incarnations on film, The Haunted Mansion and Beelejuice 2. (And there, a little recap on Winona Ryder's career that could have been its own post under other circumstances.)

Okay, in August I move on to Noah, which is currently my least favorite Aronofsky film -- though we'll see if a revisit gives me a greater appreciation of it.

I might prefer to die first

On that same trip to Barnes & Noble I discussed Thursday, I saw that they've released an updated version of the seminal movie lover's tome 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die.

I understand the need to keep a volume like this fresh, since the list of movies is theoretically always changing. (Unless you're the kind of curmudgeon who thinks that all new movies are crap, but that's the kind of obstinate perspective that just shuts down discussion.)

Still, I can't help but feel like this book has been dumbed down for a generation of teenyboppers.

I can't speak to what all the changes were -- I can only judge this book by its cover. By three covers, actually. Those three covers being the front cover, the back cover and the spine.

The front cover shows a bust of Natalie Portman in her Swan Lake makeup from Black Swan, as seen above.

The back cover shows a scene of the crumbling dream city from Inception.

And the spine shows this:


It was that spine that first caught my eye, since it was that spine that peered out from the shelf. And it was that spine that pushed a guffaw up through my lungs and into my throat.

There doesn't seem much point to tell people that they "must see" a movie that almost everyone who might buy the book has already seen. I mean, with Avatar, you're talking about the movie that grossed more money at the box office than any other movie in history. That's not what I thought this book was supposed to be about.

When I've perused through the copy that we own, which was published in 2003, I've been impressed by the obscure titles I'd never heard of it. In fact, I've watched a couple movies based purely on their inclusion in the book -- and would never have known about them otherwise. The point of any guide of movies you must see is to expose you to movies it would not otherwise occur to you to see. Right?

But the real point of a book like this is to sell copies of itself. And the way to do that is to emblazon it with three of the most talked about movies of 2009 and 2010. Even if one of them, Avatar, has seriously fallen out of favor in many cinephile circles. If it was ever in favor in the first place.

To be fair, I have to ask myself what I would put on instead. After all, Black Swan is a reasonably "cool" option for the front cover. I didn't love that movie as much as some people did, but I had a very healthy respect for it. And although Portman did win the Oscar, I suspect there are some people who didn't see it because they thought it was scary and/or confronting. In any case, it's not the kind of movie you would call "easy."

Inception is a bit more of a move toward the mainstream. In fact, you could say it was as mainstream as Avatar, except that it obviously did not do the box office Avatar did.

Avatar? Well, Avatar grossed $760 million in the U.S. and $2 billion worldwide. And is highly suspect in most areas not directly related to its technical achievements.

Maybe I'd go for something like The Social Network. Yeah, this is hardly some little indie that snuck through theaters without getting its proper due. But I could get behind it as an example of vibrant filmmaking that challenged norms. (As though Inception is not. I guess I'm working myself into a corner here.) But really, it wouldn't work from a marketing perspective. There's no image from The Social Network that's as arresting as Portman's face as you see it above.

I guess what I'm really struggling with is the idea that you have to appeal to people with movies they already know and love, to get them to discover movies they don't yet know or love. I probably shouldn't be struggling with that, though. It's a fairly basic marketing strategy, and beyond that, it just makes sense. Are you really going to use images from a genuinely overlooked gem, something most people don't know about, for any of your three covers? If you do, that's simply foolish.

I guess what I'm really saying is "Wahh! Avatar is not that good!"

Yep, that works.

But more to the point I'm trying to make, I can draw a direct contrast between the marketing strategy they used this time around and the one they used in 2003. Back then, Janet Leigh screaming during the shower scene from Psycho -- a movie that came out 43 years before the book was published -- adorned the front cover. That's a movie there is no question everyone should see before they die. It has stood the test of time and earned that designation through its durability. And it certainly seems to be iconic enough and attention-getting enough to have sold copies. (It sold a copy to us, anyway.)

The back cover? A picture of Groucho Marx. You can't tell what movie it's from, but does it really matter?

To show their savvy, however, the editors also included something current. The spine showed a picture of Catherine Zeta-Jones from the then-current best picture winner, Chicago. Will Chicago always belong in the list of 1001 films? I'm not sure, but I hope so. If they were committing themselves to some sense of permanence within movie history, at least they were only gambling on one movie, not three.

So couldn't they have at least given us one classic of the three this time around?

Here's something else interesting to consider: Since the number of movies in the book must always remain at 1001, what movies do they kick out with each new installment? And who decides that? What poor movie is Avatar sending to the showers?

You could take two different approaches to this question. On the one hand, if these movies are really considered to be required viewing, they can't be completely quirky choices. They have to have reached some level of commonly acknowledged achievement, or else it could be absurd to suggest that a cinema lover would die incomplete without watching them. So you could drop some titles that were submitted by a snobby contrarian who hasn't had any role in this book for two decades.

But then you go back to the argument that there are certain movies that are so well known, like Avatar, that they don't need to be trumpeted in a setting like this. Their reputation precedes them, whether that reputation is positive or negative. (Avatar has its share of people in both camps.) At what point does a best picture like Gladiator, which certainly seems to have lost its luster over the years, continue to have residency in this book?

Maybe the real point is that the most recent entries in a book like this are always a bit of a waste. People who already love cinema, or have vowed to use a book like this to become film lovers, are the only real logical candidates to own this book. And most of them should already be aware of most of the recent entries.

Maybe the real value of Avatar in a book like this is not for the 2012 edition, but for the 2042 edition.

By 2042, most of us will have forgotten how much of a disappointment it really was.

Strings attached - to Portman's Oscar hopes

One of the surest bets on Tuesday is that Natalie Portman will receive her second Oscar nomination for her role in Black Swan. After all, she won the Golden Globe for the role. That's not a guarantee she'll get nominated -- just ask Jim Carrey, whose win (in the musical/comedy category) for Man on the Moon didn't translate to any Oscar love. But it's very close to a guarantee.

In Portman's case, it feels like "her year," so a nomination is one of the best locks for Tuesday morning. Annette Bening will give her the best run for her money, but may settle for second place for at least the third time in her career.

Then again, she may not ... if voters hold Portman's upcoming roles against her when they vote.

Don't think that's possible? Just ask Eddie Murphy.

Murphy was also a Globe winner for his role as James "Thunder" Early in Dreamgirls, and was considered the frontrunner to win his first Oscar in the same supporting actor category. Until Norbit came along and screwed everything up.

There's no way to verify that, of course, but the standard thinking at the time (early 2007) was that voters would have cast a lot more ballots for Murphy if they weren't being simultaneously assaulted by the grotesque Rasputia character from the Norbit ads. That was one of three roles Murphy played in the movie, but either of the other two (the title character and an old Chinese man) would have probably still allowed Murphy to stroll up to the podium on Oscar night. This vile, crude third character, which required every bit of latex in Rick Baker's arsenal, was what did Murphy in. Or so the thinking goes. (The Oscar went to Alan Arkin in Little Miss Sunshine, a deserving choice.)

Now, No Strings Attached, which comes out today, is no Norbit, even if you might alphabetize them consecutively. It addresses a perfect topic for a romantic comedy -- fuck buddies, or "friends with benefits" (there's an actual movie called Friends with Benefits, starring Justin Timberlake and Portman's Swan castmate Mila Kunis, coming out this summer) -- and it looks like it's been made at least half-competently. Let's hope so, because then I won't have to be so disappointed in mumblecore darling Greta Gerwig for "selling out" to be in this movie.

On the other hand, it's pretty far from Oscar material. In fact, has a movie featuring Ashton Kutcher ever been nominated for an Oscar? (The answer is, no, but Emilio Estevez' Bobby did get nominated for a Golden Globe -- a best picture nomination that was about as unjust as this year's nominations of The Tourist and Burlesque.)

But Portman isn't only fighting No Strings Attached when it comes to subliminally influencing the Academy. Her next two features are Your Highness, a Medieval stoner comedy starring James Franco and Danny McBride, and Thor, the ridiculous-looking comic book movie. They release in April and May, respectively, so there isn't much in the way of actual advertising for them just yet. But voters may still be mulling over their ballots around the time of the Super Bowl, when there figures to be ads for at least one if not both of these films. In fact, factoring in Black Swan, that makes this one of the most fertile periods in the career of a woman who once expressed her ambivalence about continuing acting as a profession. It's possible that No Strings Attached would not be enough to sabotage her chances, but the three movies put together could convince Oscar voters that Portman isn't "Oscar material."

Not that there's anything Portman could have/should have done differently. You make the choices you make and you sign on for the projects you think will be fun, challenging, and/or lucrative. Once you're on the dotted line, you're committed, and you have no control over when the studios consider it the perfect time to unleash these films on the world. Unless you decide to play the diva on set just to delay the production -- which is basically career suicide.

In fact, if we'd heard that Portman had stalled the momentum of her own career in order to manage her image in the months immediately following Black Swan, she would instantly drop several notches in our estimation. First off, it would mean she thought she had a good chance at an Oscar -- never a safe thing to assume, and the mere assumption is the kind of thing that seems to jinx it, if you're a superstitious person. But then it would also represent a cold and calculating attempt to finesse the conditions that must be in place for a person to win an Oscar -- which are not only giving a good performance, but also being likable ... and also not tainting your performance by reminding people that you're the kind of person who would consider Norbit an acceptable use of your talents.

Well, there should be a deserving first-time winner come Oscar night, one way or another. If Portman wins for her harrowing performance in Black Swan, she'll deserve it. If Bening finally wins her first Oscar after three previous nominations, spread almost equally throughout a 20-year career, then that'll also be a well-deserved coronation of one of Hollywood's most well-liked actresses. And if someone like Jennifer Lawrence from Winter's Bone manages to sneak in and steal it, that'd be great, too.

As for No Strings Attached ... my affection for Portman and my dislike for Kutcher averages out to me catching this on video sometime in August.