I watched Black Swan while I was home for the snow day. I had the video going on one side of my screen while I was answering emails from work on the other. I’m not sure what presented itself first, frustration with work or frustration with the movie, but three quarters of the way into the film I was officially in a bad mood.
It’s a Darren Aronofsky directed film, the man responsible for Requiem for a Dream, one of the most depressing movies I’ve ever seen, so I should have been more prepared for the onslaught of negative emotions that coursed through me while watching Black Swan.
Natalie Portman’s Nina Sayers appeared pathetically meek and timid for a good portion of the movie, which I guess can happen when you’re experiencing a downward spiral of paranoia and insanity. Her bone-thin body is not just that of a ballerina but it seems to personify just how emotionally fragile her character is. If that’s what they were going for, it was very effective. During many of the dance sequences in which Nina is trying to invoke her black swan, it almost sounds like she’s whimpering. Maybe that was me whimpering in my mind.
Much like Requiem, the film was dark with embittered characters and a loss of hope midway through that things would end well for any of them. You could tell Natalie Portman played the role exactly as the script and genre warranted. She convinced me she was losing her mind but I wasn’t exactly routing for her character to regain it; I think that was ultimately the issue for me and this film. Despite my feelings on the movie as a whole, they should just give Portman an Oscar already. She plays feeble and dysfunctional to perfection, and deserves some credit for morphing into a bird.
Even though I expressed bouts of irritation, I watched Black Swan to the end because good or bad, I resolved that I could never get that hour and forty minutes back so I might as well gain a sense of closure. And once I did, I quickly reminded myself that now I never have to watch it again.
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