Black Swan
After a lovely and entirely too calorie-heavy dinner at the wonderful [ONE] restaurant, a group of us headed to the theater to check out Black Swan. The buzz surrounding this one is amazing, so we wanted to see if it deserved all that praise.
It does--but don't go without understanding what you're getting into. Sarah summarized the experience as like being punched in the face for two hours, and that's a fair assessment. The intensity never lifts, and the descent into madness is terrifying and believable.
Natalie Portman is simply brilliant. If she doesn't win the Best Actress Oscar going away, there is no justice. I haven't seen another performance in a 2010 film that even came close to hers.
Everything about the movie works. All the performances, the direction, the script--you name it, and it was strong, very strong.
Just understand that you'll be signing up to watch the disintegration of a person, and that is very hard to do.
I don't regret going, and if you're up for the film's subject matter, I can't recommend it highly enough, but I doubt I'll buy the DVD or watch it again. I just don't know that I want to take that pain again.
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2 comments:
This movie is on my must see list, and has been since I saw the first preview online. But I heard a dissenting POV this weekend from Alex's dance company director. She felt that the movie unfairly exploited all of the dance world's worst cliches, and that the dancing was not up to the elite level that one would see in a professional ballet company, specifically upper body carriage from the principal dancers (the stars, whose primary skill set is acting, not dance) was incredibly poor. She hated the movie. That said, I still want to see it, and I don't know enough about dance that I will likely recognize the flaws in the ballet scenes. I think that's probably true for most viewers. But I have now decided I will definitely not watch it with Alex. :-)
I can imagine that criticism might be true, though I have no ability to comment on it.
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