Black Swan

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

I've been hearing a lot about "Black Swan" recently.   Apparently it has caught Oscar's eye, and now has somehow managed to reach right into ring of various Best Picture frontrunners.  Those leaders include the Facebook epic "The Social Network", "The Kids Are Alright", and "The Fighter".  Unfortunately, those movies are all such bores, clearly made by people with no interest to entertain anybody but the Academy itself.  "Black Swan" however, is a horror movie.  Horror movies never get appreciated by those snobby top critics, and they never ever get Academy nods.  Just how awesome must this movie be to have reached this level?

Pretty damn awesome.  If you want a dark beautiful psychological horror film with some lovely lesbian fanservice and creepy visuals, here you go.  Where can you go wrong here?  Of course, all this immediately disqualifies "Black Swan" from ever winning Best Picture.  If I were Director Darren Aronofosky, I would be proud of that fact.  Darren, climb up to the roof of your house and shout to the world "My movie was too good for Best Picture!"  You deserve it, dude.

Ballet is not my favorite art form, I'll admit that right now.  However, after seeing "Black Swans", I'd actually want to see the show Natalie Portman puts on.  She is able to mix together virginal restraint and a wonderfully screwed-up self-mutilation obsession to create a disturbing dance for her audience.  Forced to play both the heroine and the villain of the ballet Swan Lake, Nina's mind splits between her safe isolation and sexualized-violance.  She isn't being haunted by vengeful spirits or jealous understudies, rather its her own psyche that is tearing itself apart.  Its a nasty little film:  sexy, frightening, and artful.  Plus plenty of lesbian fanservice.  When Oscar time comes, I know what horse I'm backing.

When the biggest complaint I can make about my movie going experience is the trailers for other movies, that's a good thing.  Since "Black Swan" has dived into the Academy world, its surrounded by trailers for lame pretentious pieces of boredom.  Does anybody really want to see the 1950s period piece starring Sean Penn called "Just Give Me The Oscar Already"?  Then there's Nicole Kidman's movie about a couple whose son dies called "We Hate Humanity and Want to Make as Many People As Possible Miserable, Fuck You".  Movies like that are so dreary and joyless that I honestly wonder if the people who watch them are members of my own species.  Its bad enough that the so-called "action movie" "The Hurt Locker" won Best Picture this year despite having all the excitement of a cancer hospice and being just about as much fun.  You know, Hollywood, its bad enough that I have to deal with "Gulliver's Travels"* posters in my theatres, do I need to see your excrement in the trailers as well?  Luckily "Black Swan" is nothing like any of those films.

Natalie Portman plays a twenty-eight-year-old virgin ballerina, Nina who is fearful that her great moment in the spotlight is going to pass her right by.  Being beautiful, perfectionist, emotionally immature, and completely repressed, she is perfect for the part of the heroine, White Swan in Swan Lake.  But her French asshole boss, played by Vincent Cassel, sees a flash of furious passion inside her, and picks her to play both the White and Black Swans.  But Nina just cannot summon the sexual energy to play the dark seductress role of the Black Swam.  Unfortunately Nina's road to sexual and adult maturity, her crazy mother is completely smothering and obsessive.  Thing get even worse when a new ballerina, Lily (played by Mila Kunis**) comes in and is the perfect Black Swan:  unpredictable, oozing sexiness, and dark.

In the midst of Nina's sexual awakening, her happy little place in the world is breaking apart.  Her mother is growing more and more unbearable and gets even a little too "touchy" if you know what I mean.  The previous star of the show, Beth (played by a tragically underused Winona Ryder) has befallen a tragic accident and is stuck in the hospital.  Since Nina has been losing her mind all movie, you're left wondering, did she do it?  A dark shadow of Nina can be seen reflected in the mirrors that decorate nearly every shot of the film.  Also she's taken to scratching her back compulsively, Nina has to tear her nails right off.  And what is that growing out of her finger?  A feather?  The boundaries between reality and fantasy begin to fade away as Nina loses herself more and more into the darkness within.

There are all together five roles or less in the film, yet all are done to utter perfection.  Natalie Portman is able to perfectly reflect the quiet meekness of her character and yet take on her hidden lust.  Dark Nina simply is Portman with her hair down, no special effect, yet Portman is able to carry her face in such a way that completely remakes the character.  And she can dance too.  In her obsession to meet the lunatic body standards of the ballerina, Portman has completely remade her form.  This is her best role yet.  Mila Kunis is able to keep up perfectly as Nina's lusty rival.  I just wish we could have seen more out of Winona Ryder.

Off topic:  Winona, will you marry me?  I know you're twenty years older than me, but still the offer stands.

One major issue with the film is loss of self, especially in physical form.  Towards the start you can see the brutal results of ballet dance in Nina's toe nails, which shatter in a painful misstep.  As the film goes on however, Nina starts to rip herself to pieces in order to fit the role, filing her nails down to nothing, savagely tearing out hangnails, and then seeing her toes literally fuse together.  In the finale Nina completely becomes the Black Swan, in a beautiful yet horrifying transformation.  There may not be jump scares and there isn't even all that much blood or murders, yet "Black Swan" is clearly the best horror film of the entire year.

By the way, the Black Swan's make-up and Portman's eyes, they'll get to you.  That's nightmare central right there.

Plus if you're looking for beautiful women together, "Black Swan" had got your bill too.  All movie Nina has slowly been obsessed with her female co-stars, and it finally comes together when she has sex with Lily.  Yes, Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis together - it don't get hotter than that.  Super hot.  Teenage boys will be renting this movie and pausing for three minutes at this scene for decades.  Then there's the hilarious failed masturbation scenes.  The movie aint afraid to titillate its audience, and why should it be?  If you got a problem with me liking a movie because Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis are sleeping together (maybe, you never can know what's real here) then you just don't understand and never will.  Grow a penis and then we'll talk.  If women 12-45 can enjoy "Twilight" because Jacob is half-naked the whole time, I can enjoy some girl-girl action.  Fair trade:  fanservice is fanservice.  And since this is a good movie anyway, shut up.

One scene that I particularly found awesome was one where Nina is on the subway and sees a strange businessman making lurid gestures to her.  The guy goes all out at her, and Portman can't do anything to stop him.  What's so awesome about this is that this is same creepy businessman who sang "I Only Have Eyes For You" in "Pi", the psychological mathematics thriller that was Aronofsky's first - and honestly still best - film.

"Black Swan" is really the perfect horror movie:  frightening, disturbing, unpredictable, and yet beautiful.  In the first act Nina sees a statue that perfectly sums up the film.  Its a dancing swan with wings for arms.  But its face is a grotesque frozen look of terror.  This figure is both pure art and a wonderful Halloween decoration.  Horror doesn't have to just be a creature that goes bump in the night, it can be deranged obsession:  and what is a great muse than madness?  That's "Black Swan" for you.

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* You want to here something terrible?  The first trailers for "Gulliver's Travels" were included in the movie "Marmaduke", basically telling the audience "we know you're a bunch of idiots, so here's a movie that's just as bad".  Imagine that:  an unfunny kids movie based off a horrible comic strip featuring the trailer for the bastardization of a classic Jonathan Swift novel (and one of my favorite books ever) starring the loudest idiot in Hollywood, Jack Black.  Can you imagine anything worse than that?  Its the single lowest moment in American, nay, world culture.  Just include Twilight somehow in that story and we'll start the End Times.

** Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis happen to be the sexiest Jewish women alive today.  Interesting that Darren Aronofsky, another Jew would pick them to be in his movie.  Was he hoping to have something to bring home to Mom?  Aronofsky already scored Rachel Weisz, don't think he can't manage Natalie and Mila.