Well, yes, the tortured artist concept is pretty high school. The virgin/whore dichotomy is also a simplistic one; the movie leaves no middle ground between the two. I don’t think the movie is as amazing as the critics seem to think it is, but I still found it interesting to think about.
And pretty insultingly romantic. And insipid, the idea that art improves to the degree that the artist has lost his/her mind. And that’s the entire premise of this stupid, pretentious, overhyped, incoherent POS.
First, I apologize if you did not actually want an answer to your implied question. But it seems so obvious to me what the difference was.
As far as I can tell, you didn’t post anything about how the credits fit without the story being a modern retelling. Jimmy covered both what you said, and actually worked with what Ellis was saying as well. You were taking a point of direct opposition. Jimmy took a more compromising position. For some reason, the former annoyed Ellis, but not the latter.
Again, I apologize if this type of post is annoying.
BTW, I am familiar with Swan Lake, but not Black Swan. But even with just the descriptions here, I agree with you: this is not just a modern retelling. The theme is just too different.
I’ve never been sure how we’re supposed to feel about the prince’s behavior in Swan Lake, and a retelling that addressed this would be interesting. I mean, he chooses Odile believing she is Odette, since Odile is disguised to look exactly like Odette. That seems more like an embarrassing mix-up than a serious betrayal, and yet it is enough to doom Odette. Is this just Odette’s bad luck, or are we supposed to think that if the prince truly loved Odette he wouldn’t have been confused about who she was? Or even that the prince has a wandering eye and would intentionally cheat on her?
That’s basically how I see it too. I think it would have been fairly easy to come up with a movie that was a modern retelling of Swan Lake, maybe with a message about how a young woman in a bad situation shouldn’t wait around helplessly for the man she loves to rescue her, or that even when a man loves a woman he can’t necessarily save her from the life she’s been leading. That movie wouldn’t be Black Swan, though.
I did point out yesterday that the credits list the characters’ names along with the role that character was performing in the ballet. I can see no deeper reason why the dancers David and Sergio, barely speaking roles in the movie, would also be credited as the hero and villain of the ballet. David and Sergio were such minor characters that I wouldn’t be sure who they were if the credits didn’t clarify that they were the guys playing the Prince and von Rothbart in this production of Swan Lake.
There are several cases where this explanation doesn’t work, like Nina’s mother being credited as “The Queen” when she isn’t performing in Swan Lake at all. But that doesn’t make much sense even if we do take the movie as a retelling of Swan Lake, because Nina’s mother doesn’t fill the same role in the story as the Queen does in the ballet. I really have no idea why Nina’s mother is credited as the Queen (as I said before, if she’s analogous to any character in the ballet it’s von Rothbart), but I also don’t think it’s important. Plenty of filmmakers decide to have a little fun with the credits.
I know this is an old thread but I just saw this movie tonight.
I noticed on another site, the idea of Nina’s mother being sexually abusive came up and I thought that was interesting since it would never have occurred to me on my own. Do a lot of people feel that way, and is there any evidence? (During the sex scene, I know that “Lily” does say “My sweet girl” but I didn’t see her as turning into the mother but as Nina herself.)
Also, did you guys think that Lily really was after Nina’s role? Obviously a lot of that was in Nina’s head but there is a lot of competition in the ballet world…I don’t think it would be so far fetched…
Watched the movie and thought it was stupid.
Probably because I’m stupid and all that deep symbolism and emo tortured significance goes directly over my head and I just don’t understand it.
The best part of the movie, to my simplistic male directness was the girl on girl scene, which was hot.
My wife turned to me at the end and said “well that was stupid”
I don’t know that her mother was sexually abusive, but I definitely got the vibe that she had a hidden attraction to Nina. She was just a little bit too touchy-feely, a little too interested in her daughter’s sex life..
Someone upthread said that Nina was bulimic, while I thought she just kept puking and gagging out of constant nervousness. Anyone agree? And I didn’t really know what the scratching was about. Was it just another sign of nervousness/neuroticism?
I thought she had an eating disorder (combination of restricting/purging) just because it’s a pretty common thing in the ballet world. Though a lot of people are using that as an example of how she’s a sexual abuse survivor which seems weird to me – lots of people who aren’t sexual abuse survivors have eating disorders.
I do think her mom had boundary issues but I just didn’t see them as sexual. The hidden attraction thing does make sense (when she was saying she wouldn’t have blamed Thomas for making a move on Nina), but for the most part it just felt like a mom who never let her kid be autonomous.
Yeah, I think the mom was controlling and too restrictive of her daughter but not abusive, sexually or otherwise. My thought was that the vomiting was anorexia-bulimia on top of general anxiety, and the scratching and cutting was a manifestation of her nervous disorder.
I’m sure Lilly would have liked to have the lead, but I think she was genuinely trying to be nice and was happy for Nina to have it.
I also thought it was interesting that her mom wasn’t a typical Mama Rose type stage mom. She seemed to be sabotaging her in subtle ways–like the cake. Wouldn’t her mother, as a former ballet dancer, be aware of the need to stay thin? It seemed bizarre that she wanted her daughter to eat.
Also, keeping her home when she was going insane–understandable but most stage moms would, again, be pushing their kids into the limelight.
And I didn’t recognize Barbara Hershey. Holy plastic surgery, Batman!
That cake scene was weird. It seemed like a nice gesture, but really - a whole cake for two people, one of whom is on a severe diet? And the sudden, nasty anger when Nina protests? That was just… odd.
I think the audience, sharing Nina’s paranoid viewpoint, is supposed to be seeing the mom purposefully sabotage Nina, so that Nina will never surpass her mother. Remember how mad the mom got when Nina made that crack about how her mom had never been successful. Of course, this is all supposed to be unreliable as we’re inside the paranoid head of Nina.
Black Swan is a horror movie. Instead of a werewolf, it’s a were-swan.
I just saw it last night. I liked it. The film looked fantastic, with the camera work, settings, lighting and costumes. I also thought it was genuinely scary, and I don’t usually find films frightening. (With exceptions for Deliverance and Cape Fear) Some of the symbolism was a bit heavy handed, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I liked that she hallucinates herself as a swan at the end. If she turned into a gopher, that wouldn’t have made any sense.
When I was watching the film, I thought that Lily might have been Nina’s dark side. Nina sees Lily in places she shouldn’t, the subway, between her legs, and sometimes Nina’s face appears where Lily’s should be. Lily’s tattoos also resemble the scratches on Nina’s back. Nina thinks she stabbed Lily only to discover that she’s stabbed herself. The fact that Mila Kunis is credited as the black swan contributes to this theory. However, Lily was clearly a real person, other characters interact with her. I think Nina seized the idea of Lily as her rival and sexual interest, and that Nina, due to her craziness, had her dark side manifest itself as Lily. I thought this was cool, since crazy people often intertwine real people into their delusions. Sort of how a stalker might think that their crush in actually in love with them, even if they’ve barely interacted.
I thought part of what made it so creepy is all the weird face morphing and sometimes you’re not sure it’s happened. There’s a constant sense of, “Wait? Did I really see that?” You’re plunged in the same self-doubt/fear as Nina is.
Also, doesn’t Thomas say that the only thing stopping Nina is herself? She was the only one standing in her way. It’s like she had to throw up these barricades in her way.
I watched this tonight. When the producer guy intoned to Nina: “I have a homework assignment for you. I want you to go home and touch yourself” I turned to my wife and exclaimed, “I could be a ballerina!”
I saw the movie in January and I wasn’t completely sure even at the time, but I thought her mother’s face appeared momentarily on the morphing writhing woman that was going down on her.
This is one of the many, many, many reasons it didn’t work for me. I never thought “Wait? Did I see that?” I thought “Am I supposed to be frightened by the pictures moving? Because it isn’t scary. Why am I watching this stupid movie again?”
The movie never drew me in. I felt very distanced from her psychosis/anxiety/whatever; I wasn’t off kilter or confused. It didn’t keep me guessing what was real and what was imaginary, who to trust, who to worry about - and the parts that I didn’t know, I didn’t care about. It completely failed on the psychological thriller level for me, it was just a movie about a crazy person who happens to dance.
I think that was his point. He blatantly borrowed a lot from B-movies and '70s horror – I don’t think that was his attempt at subtle. Which is pretty much Aronofsky’s MO, though I don’t think it’s worked very well before this movie (unless The Wrestler was satire).
I liked it because it was entertaining, over-the-top, gorgeous and Portman was great in her role. Not sure it taught me any life lessons or will haunt me or anything like that, but it was more fulfilling than most.