I am afraid that this film will be for ever, in my mind at least, associated with the events that proceeded its viewing. Firstly, upon leaving I overheard some hapless chap comment to his girlfriend that he didn’t really get the film and asked which of the two swans was supposed to be the ugly duckling. Next, whilst travelling down one of Newcastle’s darker alleys we happened across two gentlemen engaged in a tiff and witnessed the Neanderthal (pronounced correctly, did you? did you!) behaviour of two local hoodlums who had stripped to the waist and were engaged in what looked like a cross between boxing and jelly wrestling. How they are describing their run in this evening I don’t know but from the angle that we watched the incident was more than a little homoerotic. Finally we arrived at my car, where some dick had seen fit to smash in the window. What followed was a slightly chilly trip up the motor way sitting on the car mats so as to not slice my derriere on the infeasible amount of broken glass on my seat.
Now to the film review:
For those of you who don’t know the story of Black Swan here comes the plot: Natalie Portman is a ballerina and she loses her shit quite spectacularly, far more spectacularly than one would imagine for a film that is been marketed to the mainstream in this way.
"Have you seen Requiem for a Dream?" was a question I wish I had asked everyone at the cinema before the film commenced. I am sure that the crowds would be significantly reduced if more folk in the viewing had. Not, you must understand because Requiem for a Dream is a bad film, far from it in fact. Requiem for a Dream is a film that caused me to have a physical reaction. I liken watching it to having a panic attack and who would want to sit through that experience a second time. Black Swan did manage to get the heart racing with panic tinged spirals of turmoil but ultimately failed to sustain this reaction in parallel to the characters transformation. The film was even guilty of the cheap horror tactics of BOO! *shriek.*This is not to say that I didn’t still think it was excellent. The intensity nob really did need to be turned down to get Aronofsky the audience that he deserves and the success of this film should buy him the control to turn the bonkers back to eleven for his next film. As it was, this film took all that was left over from the understatement of the kings speech and any other ‘understated film’ produced this year and ploughed it into a melodrama so big that it has developed its own gravitational pull and is orbited by little planets of dancing misery.
I’m not one to usually focus on visuals, quite frankly because I’m not a big enough film buff to judge them excellent or poor. But there are passages of this film with long scenes of dancing and pensive looks all of which are lit and shot in such a way that they more closely resemble a film art installation than a major Hollywood production.
Once again the success of Black Swan is proving that audiences are ready to be tested by mainstream Hollywood output. The success of this film paired with that of Inception will hopefully lead to more risk taking by those with the commissioning cheques and a more fulfilled audience ready to take bigger risks with their hard earned time and money on their cinema trips.
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