Movie Appraisal: Black Swan (2010)

So, I went to my annual movie theatre trip tonight and saw Black Swan. It's actually great timing that I saw it when I did because I can compare the movie to Pandorum which I saw earlier today.

Black Swan is a film that has received critical acclaim. The critics absolutely love it. It has cinematography of an art film, but the genre of a psychological film, and some very good acting performances. What I have to ask is why. Why does this film get such good ratings and Pandorum doesn't? This film was well done, but certainly nowhere close to perfect. Darren Aronofsky is a good filmmaker, but he does seem to have issues with certain things. I can safely say that the man likes making his movies into art, and also that I really don't like the endings of the man's films.

The plot here doesn't really even matter. There's a production of Swan Lake by a ballet company and Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) is a quiet ballet dancer who really wants the role as the Swan Queen. That's about all you need to know about the plot. We're introduced to a few issues throughout, such as some possible emotional problems Nina might have, as well as the demanding pressures of her part and how she wants herself to be perfect.

The psychological aspects of this film come out as Nina changes from the person she has always been to somebody else. Certain themes pervade the film, such as sexuality and lust, a darker half of oneself, and going mad. The sex theme is probably the most interesting to explore. It seems that Nina's introduction to "exploring" herself releases something inside of her, maybe something that had long been hidden away. She becomes empowered as she finds her lusts, but also self-destructive. This is an almost purely psychological film, showing madness as something that can warp one's own reality. I find the idea fascinating, but the execution seems to be lacking.

The acting was very well done. The cinematography was superb. The dancing was beautiful. Hell, most of the scenes in this film look more beautiful than real life. My problem is that the actual film is all over the place. Hectic would be a good word to describe it. The film doesn't have the focus it should have. It focuses on the plot rather than Nina's psychology, which actually takes away from the message the movie was trying to get across. The psychological elements in this film are where the real interest lies, but they're often not really touched upon, or very vaguely shown. I feel like this kind of film needs to either embrace the psychological elements of the film or scrap them... and I feel this film took a very middle of the road approach, which didn't work out.

I look at how wonderful Pi was. It explored the human psyche and the insanity of the mind, and if this film were more like that this could have been great... but instead this film focused too much on an uninteresting plot and psychological details that either went nowhere or were done badly.

I do have my complaints about this film about what it should have done... as well as what it did wrong, but I did enjoy it, maybe not as much as Pi or even Pandorum, but it was really well done. The shots were beautiful. The actors looked like real people in a real story. I liked it... well, I liked it pretty decently until the ending. I don't know what it is about Aronofsky, but any movie he makes I hate the ending of. The last fifteen or twenty minutes of this film was kind of stupid. I loved the last shot and some shots in between, but I found the whole ending sequence fairly stupid and easily predictable. I'm not going to spoil anything. I'm simply going to say that I didn't like it and do not think it worked at all. At a basic level, with a movie with as much realism as this movie showed, the ending should have been better than what they had come up with.

I did like the different aspects of Nina shown in this film though, as well as the beautiful and creepy shots involving mirrors. I thought those were extremely well done. The whole dual nature really was wonderful to see and easily one of my favorite parts of this film. My favorite part of this movie was honestly some of the shots that felt derivative from other, better films... one in particular that I swear was stolen straight out of David Cronenberg's The Fly. I also liked the creepy little man on the subway. Man, he was awesome... and I also felt he was indicative of Nina's own sharp madness by that point in the movie, brought out by newly found lusts, a darker nature, and her own loss of innocence.

This film could have been so much better. It could have been better than Jacob's Ladder, and yet it fumbled in the end-game. The ending made me cringe when it should have made me cry.

I would rather see Pandorum again over this movie any time... and that's why I feel that the critic rating system fails. Yeah, this was a very well made movie, but at times it didn't quite hit my enjoyment center. It didn't speak to me like Jacob's Ladder did. After seeing this film I told one of my friends that I saw it with, "This movie would have been excellent if it had been more like Jacob's Ladder." and I'm sticking with that thought. if Jacob's Ladder is the pinnacle of psychological films then this film is a nice little peak far under it. It's not that it's bad. It's only that there are many other films, especially psychological films, that are better. Go watch Jacob's Ladder if you want a fantastic psychological film. Go watch this film if you want to see some top-notch cinematography. Again, I'd still watch Pandorum over this movie any time.

Critics are morons.

Movie Appraisal: π (Pi) (1998)

"...Press Return"

π or Pi is a movie primarily concerned with knowledge. It is a very good film, reminiscent of some of the greatest films I've ever seen. It is a great film, full of imagery and emotion. It is about a man who is crazy in the  obsessive kind of way. He probably suffers from some kind of autism. He shows his descent into something beyond madness. It is a fantastic film to watch even if it makes very little sense.

It reminds me of Jacob's Ladder sometimes, especially the scenes that take place in the subway and his room. Quite a few scenes are also heavily reminiscent of Eraserhead (1977) and Un Chien Andalou (1929). There are quite many surreal images throughout the film, and there is also plenty of body horror to go around. Another reason this film reminds me of the two latter films is because of the way the film is shot. It is in black-and-white, and tends to look like a much older film. Some of the filmography looks a bit more recent, but on the whole it is hard to see how this movie wasn't shot in the 1970s. It is very well done. I loved the imagery and the way the character is shown as going increasingly insane in his search and eventual finding of a very important number.

This film is confusing. The soundtrack sounds like some kind of hardcore science music, which is actually quite fitting, although I've never heard a soundtrack quite like it before. The narration from the main character, Max, is fitting, but also out of place in some areas of the film and a bit distracting. I've never been a person who loves narration in film. I think that the film should speak for itself, and if this film was allowed to speak for itself and would let go of its narration, it would be a better albeit more confusing film.

It's also a very disturbing film. The body horror is there. It may not be prevalent, but it does exist. Some of the ant imagery and the slime-goo stuff is kind of creepy, if not downright disturbing. The issues with migraines throughout also are very different. I have migraines, but I never get the hallucinatory and very hardcore migraines that Max has to suffer through. It can be hard to watch at points, and a lot of the more gruesome imagery does very much remind me of Jacob's Ladder. Honestly, that movie and this one seem to be almost like siblings to one another. Jacob's Ladder is the better film, but this movie is trying very hard to be as memorable, as exciting, and as bat crazy as Jacob's Ladder and it does a very good job.

It's not perfect. The shooting of the film seems a bit amateurish, much like the filmography of Eraserhead. But it does a good job showing Max's life falling apart into some kind of insanity. The other characters throughout the film do a good job of changing. They become likened to monsters at points in the films and it's a little terrifying to watch. I must say that the acting throughout the film is one of the reasons to watch it. It has some absolutely fantastic acting. The acting really does make this movie quite a good film.

I did mention that I do have a few issues with this film though. Mostly simple things that kind of bug me. Lenny, a friend character of Max, whom he meets in a diner early on in the film, is a Hasidic Jew who studies the Torah for the true name of God. He works on number theories for finding the name in the text. But he's never heard of the simple Fibonacci Sequence, something that I would think anybody working in number theory would know. I understand the filmmakers were trying to explain the sequence and the patterns seen throughout the film, but that bothered me to no end. I don't study number theory and yet I've heard of that sequence. Hell, I heard about it when I was taking Algebra II in high school. So, it seems that anybody actually studying this stuff would have much more reason than me to know and recognize the term. Some of the other simple explanations bother me as well, but again, they make sense. I was a little confused by some of this movie, and the jump-cuts didn't make it any easier to follow, but I understand. That's the kind of movie the filmmakers were trying to create and it works even though it sometimes makes no sense.

I like the ending of this film, but again, it makes no sense. The thing that leads up to the ending is actually hard to watch... and then the movie ends on a... note? I don't want to spoil it, but it is reminiscent of the beginning of the film. I liked it, but again, it was confusing. This whole movie was confusing, and yet I liked it, and I think anybody who watches this film would like it too if they don't mind being confused.

This film is surreal-horror, of the same genre a movie like Eraserhead would be. It's like a David Lynch film without the David Lynch. It's good, but I could see David Lynch making it both better and more confusing. Great film altogether though. If you enjoyed any of the films I mentioned throughout this review, you'll probably like this movie too.