Oscars: Black Swan

Hoping to get The Chicago Code review up later this week. As I'm jetting to Sydney for two weeks tomorrow evening. Mandy will have you covered with her review of either The Fighter or 127 Hours in the next week or two.

I can still feel the chills down my spine, looking at my own reflection in the mirror, sweat dripping into my bathrooms basin. However, I don’t do any physical anything, I don’t do ballet and I’m not insane. Although Black Swan’s Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) is, and boy does she do a fantastic job holding up the weight of this dark film.

Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan, for all intents and purposes is a rather disturbing film, which twists and pirouettes with a superb intensity and darkness that I probably wouldn’t expect from a film about ballerinas and their sanity. But what we get is something that focuses primarily on Nina, a dancer that aims for perfection and oozes elegance in the interpretation of her dancing; our immediate thought process puts her in the perfect position to play the White Swan. Natalie Portman portrays this with such a range of emotion that she moves out of the innocent framework we see her established with and watch her change into a much more scary, broken and dangerous girl.

Although Portman’s character development couldn't go anywhere without some people in her life and we’re fortunate to see her supported by a raft of excellent characters. In her personal life, her mother Erica (Barbara Hershey), a former dancer herself focuses on seeing her little girl succeed, pushing her hard and always keeping her in her line of perfection. In her professional life, Thomas (Vincent Cassel) runs the ballet company Nina dances for. The man is a “visionary” who sees Nina as the next lead for his reinvention of Swan Lake. However, you immediately get the feeling that he isn’t the purist of pure; instead we’re treated to a man that womanises to get what he wants. A point I’ll pick up on in a tick in regards to Aronofsky’s straight up directorial style. Nina seems to have it all going for her with her selection to lead the next season of Swan Lake, until the door slams shut, introducing her “doppelganger” in the form of Lily (Mila Kunis).

This is where Aronofsky brings the big guns, rushing us into Nina’s feelings towards Lily’s personality, which mirrors that of the Black Swan, the side of the Swan Queen that Nina can’t get right. Portman manages to squeeze out a level of curiosity that we would find in a documentary about wildlife exhibiting a change in their environment. The biggest thing I got out of this, and excuse me for sounding a bit slow on the story, was that Aronofsky’s stylistic choices don’t just play into reality but also into a hint of the supernatural. He does a splendid job at delicately balancing Nina’s states of mentality; is there a supernatural force at play or is Nina batshit insane?

Aronofsky brings across that sense of a fractured mental state, with jarring hand held camera movements. One particular scene, has the audience watch Nina spin over and over, and the camera works with her movements, spin after spin after spin. In this case, we would lose that sense of intensity had Aronofsky chosen a softer more smoother approach to his building of each scene.

Like I said, a big note to make is that Aronofsky doesn’t shy away from burying the subtext of the story, instead bringing it out in a rather bold, frightening fashion. One recurring motif in the film is the use of mirrors, a kind of sub textual nudge towards the audience, as we see Nina’s personality dip in and out of the adaptive personality the role of playing the Swan Queen requires. Portman deserves the Oscar, no doubt about it. She carries this film with a dark elegance, balanced perfectly with the innocence and curiosity to make her character charming, and one that we can get behind. Regardless of how radical the character changes over the course of the film.

Portman will get the Oscar, she deserves it. As a whole, Black Swan isn’t going to win best picture, nor will Aronofsky for direction, it’s too small and dark of a film to make any push for the gold. However that doesn’t make this film any less than fantastic, this isn’t something you’d take to your date to for Valentine’s Day, this is something you want to sit down and watch when your mind isn’t so relaxed. Why? Because if you switched your brain off, the film loses its edge with the creepy scenes and shock cuts and the pay off at the end would not be as satisfying, please watch this when you’re wide awake. This needs to be watched with a focus that you’d expect Nina Sayers to have, although I’d imagine most of us aren’t as crazy as her.

Movie Review: Easy A

Upon first inspection of Easy A’s marketing* my first immediate thought was that it was another movie that followed the blah of high school. I mean, we’ve all experienced it, there are countless movies, and it’s a formula that has become a has-been over the years. However, Easy A, whilst formulaic in parts comes out a winner.

Olive Penderghast (Emma Stone) is a nice girl. She’s smart, avoiding a camping trip with that lead hipster cheerleading girl from Hellcats, however quickly cooking up a lie to cover for the fact that she doesn’t want to spend time with the girl from Hellcats. From here, the lie expands quickly through student channels and Olive, the nice girl that she is, makes the decision to capitalise on the hype rather than flat out deny it.

For me, what was great to see in the immediate opening few minutes was a montage of Stone doing exactly what I’d expect most teenagers to do. Singing to their favourite tunes, painting nails, painting their dogs nails. It’s all comfortable, there’s no crazy out of character stuff going on. It’s just normal.

Bert V. Royal does a good job at keeping the dialogue and action nicely composed, nothing overly cheesy comes from the characters, I mean you’ll find the typical American high school archetypes (which I’m still rather unfamiliar with when comparatively spoken about with Australia’s system) in the form of Marianne, a cah-razy Christian who becomes the source of the lies spread about Olive. But they aren’t too overblown; it’s all handled well by the cast and the director.

It’s interesting to see how nuts people go and how different stories become when siphoned through hundreds of different people. But Director Will Gluck has a smooth handling over it all. There’s a bunch of characters that jump in and out, but it never feels overstuffed, Gluck seems to do it by never giving these players substantial screen time to warrant a primary focus, they are characters we know will probably disappear. Give credit to Royal who does well in balancing the characters and working Olive in and out of scenes appropriately, and also the subtle “meta” joke (if you can call it a joke) with regards to John Hughes and his works.

And yes I admit Penn Badgley as Todd is actually watchable in this as the inevitable love interest. He does really bother me in Gossip Girl. But he seems to be well suited to this material. The notable supporting cast are Thomas Haden Church (who I love from George of the Jungle) as Olive’s teacher Mr. Griffith and Olive’s parents in the form of Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson are a quirky breather from the high school grounds, all of them put in great performances which give the film a boost.

But the main one to watch is Emma Stone, who, I liked for a while, I mean, I could watch her and enjoy the energy she brought to the screen, but she never had that kind of “wow” factor. But in this, I’m now in love with her, she doesn’t overplay the title given to her as the “new school slut,” instead she walks a line between her original personality and her adopted personality. There’s a particular scene in which she has an emotional breakdown in front of Todd, but sells it so damn well that I really did feel for the emotions the character would have been feeling. You deserve the award season nomination, Emma; I can’t commend the performance enough.

*I guess it's hard to market a teen comedy about sexual truth and all that jazz. So I'll let it fly.

[Not so] Special Features:

• My memory is awful, but has Amanda Bynes had such puffy cheeks? I can remember her face being a little “thinner” as superficial as it sounds.
• Did I see Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions being played on the scene with the films flashback to Olive and Todd? FUTURE SIGHT?! OR SECRET KNOWLEDGE of our heroine? Whoa, Thomas Haden Church! This movie looks like a soothsayer edit to Stone’s casting in the new Spider-Man.
• I don’t like Hellcats. And I’m not “judging” from previews, I have actually seen a string of episodes and it’s awful. I don’t like Aly Michalka.

The Final Countdown:

After it all ended though, I got up from the couch with a smile, I enjoyed the terrific performances that gave characters life, the story was light and smart albeit already done before in different shades and it was all very well handled by Gluck, and I’ll tell you now, that is the god damn truth.