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| When is it my turn to be the swan queen? |
Ok so Ive seen black swan about four times now. I was going to write a big essay thing about it but now im just kind of getting bored of it. Its sad how things lose their magic with repeat viewing. Its like porn, or looking at your new haircut in the mirror. Anyway, I still havnt actually read any reviews for the movie, that might clear some stuff up. Im just going to post the notes I wrote so I can "put this baby to bed":
- I dont get, it natalie is playing the white swan and the black swan but the blacks swan steals the prince from the white swan then the white swan kills herself. So natalie steals the prince from herself and kills herself because she has had the prince stolen? That doesnt make any sense. This is just the story of a psychotic ballerina girl who kills herself I dont accept the metaphoric pretext of this story
- So natalitie thinks she is and or wants to be wynona ryder but once she (thinks) she realizes what kind of relationship vincent wants to have with her she runs back and returns wynonas things. Rejecting the persona she was taking on because she realizes how hard it is to be at the 'top" like wynona was and have everyone "after" for her. Or something like that.
- Several scenes seem a little out of place. the scene with the doctor poking her in the chest and then another where she is being taught to do that flapping things with her arms. They feel like scenes from a documentary or some kind of behind the scenes making of the movie. The more I think about this the more it irritates me.
- Variously throughout the film vincent tells natalie to "let go" and he "wants passion". Perfection and the stifling of passion is then natalies passion it seems to me. Also I think this is a sophomoric statement, as if you just magically "let go" and everything becomes perfect. After all nothing comes of bloodless toil.
- Im sure aronofsky is trying to say something with the connection between winona ryder and natalie portman, but, forgive me for this caprice but, I dont really care. It just doesnt seem compelling. For instance im sure there is some connection symbolically with the things of wynonas that she steasl but, well I dont really want to worry about it. Tt seems like such an accessory to the film. Gory face stabbing not withstanding. I really think wynonas character must of been left over from some earlier draft or something and then just stayed on in the film so they could throw in the face stabbing thing.
- I really think that in this film, there is no black swan. The black swan is just a notion. It doesnt stand to scrutiny or reason, even the notion of it is enigmatic in the film. This is why we see so many contradictory depictions of the swan as alternately evil or seductive or powerful or liberating etc.etc.
- Mila kunis was never really going to be the black swan. It was a farce all along. A fear of natalies. The stick in this carrot and stick paradigm
- I love how this movie is completely fucking psycho from the very beginning
- Natalie stealing wynonas make up? Total psycho move.
- Why is it that darren aronophsky always does these little "technical" montage sort of scenes. Like the ballet dancers putting their shoes on and so on? It looks cool, dont get me wrong, its just so blatantly ornamental. Its like he is trying to sell me ballet shoes or something. It strikes me also as the type of thing you see in a documentary
- In the film natalie sees her face in the face of others numerous times. Often as the black swan but sometimes as in the opening in the face of an anonymous women. Even receiving a phone call just as she does. Is she watching herself as someone else? I dont understand this. This effect in the film doesnt really seem consistent to me.
- The doppelganger, the black swan(?), her own alternate self (alternate reality?). Who is the black swan? Who is the doppelganger? "She is!" The movie implies again and again, but this answer does not satisfy me. It strikes me that natalie is constantly horrified of this other self and yet it does nothing and seems to be capable of doing nothing to her physically and yet she is viscerally terrified. Contrast this with the way she harms herself again and again throughout the film. She is, physically, much more of a harm and terror to herself than any doppelganger. This has a strange way of abstracting the horror. Making it intangible. Imagine the scene in which wynona stabs her own face with the nail file. What, if we imagine, would be the most horrible thing someone could do with a nail file? Stab you someplace in the face or genitals right? And yet this kind of violent physical attack is in a way, too primal, almost empowering in its physicality. The enemy I can come to grips with physically is the enemy I have a fighting chance against. If on the other hand we think how it transpires in the film. Wynona stabes not natalies face but her own and in doing so natalie is incapable of doing anything to stop the horror. It overflows in a cacophany. Removing all power she might have. She is frozen in horror. Incapable. Incapacitated. Outside herself in the horror she is witnessing. The layers compound then. As the horror of this stabbing transpires not out side of her but in fact in her mind. In her mind she assults wynona and yet she is still incapable of confrontation with this monster (herself). She is stabbing wynona in the face not to destroy wynonas face but to destroy the wynona inside herself?
- The mother is really the only tangible horror in the film. Vincents character is just a mild manned pervert by comparison.
- Why does she steal winonas things? To take on her aura? This seems like an over simplification
- Aso id like to say natalie looks great with that super dark lipstick ("all dolled up"). I guess im a sucker for that "not a whore pretending to be a whore" look. (go figure)
- Natalie is just this empty husk of a person the entire film. At first this struck me as an inadequacy. No real character progression. Then though, after thinking about it, I realized there was progression, and more importantly, a more real, unstereotyped, inevitable progression. She is completely psycho from the very beginning and just gets deeper and deeper into herself as the film goes on. The white swan is the complete lunatic and mila kunis, a completely normal girl who goes out and drinks and meets guys on a friday night is, for natalie, the complete seductive whore. Only for someone completely subsumed in there own emotional fantasy land could this be the case. Every other scene is natalie misunderstanding a look or phrase and assuming it is some attack or intrigue. There is (almost) nothing "in" her but self critical insecurity and paranoia.
- When she is masturbating in the bathtub and her fingers come up bloody is that her breaking her hymen? Or just more of her imagining blood?
- I mean seriously I dont really know if this is good acting or just natalie being natalie but her face does everything perfect in this movie. the eyebrows, the voice, THE VOICE. The ways she cracks at the beginning of sentances. Perfect. Too perfect. Because its really her, isnt it?
- Also that fucking scene where the eyes on the painting move. Fucking christ, more creepy than the winkies guy, for me anyway.
- The black swan is the "evil" twin but who is really seduced here? Nobody is seduced by the black swan. Nobody seduces anyone in the entire film save for mila seducing natalie (in her fantasy). Also I guess the white swan seduced natalie from the very beginning.
- Also there are mirrors in like every fucking scene. Not just one or in one plane of vision even but mirrors looking into mirror, mirrors reflecting nothing. All over the place. Like literally almost every other scene. Id count them but I dont care to know that much.
Anyway so, now I have to watch perfect blue again. I loved it to death when I first saw it. Thinking about it makes me remember how I saw it like ten years ago or something. And that just makes me sick.
