Has anyone seen it? I just saw it tonight and... I don't watch many psychological thrillers.
I've seen it, Alyse. I thought the choreography, music, dancing, costumes, etc. were beautiful, but I was kind of disappointed at the end. I think I'm just tired and bored with movies in which it turns out that the main character has been crazy the entire time. Although I did love that Nina talked about "feeling it" and being perfect as she died.
I think maybe this is the type of movie that I need to see more than once in order to fully appreciate.
Yeah I have seen it too- it made me very uncomfortable.
I think that is was quite clear from the beginning that Nina had some severe psychological problems (self harm, bulimia, a seriously deranged mother) and so i felt that watching her descent into madness was a little like watching the filmmakers kick a small puppy. She really needed to be institutionalised around the middle of the film.
For this reason, I didn't 'enjoy' the film...it just made me kind of squirmy
As I really don't watch Psych thrillers often; I did kind of like it. But you both make excellent points, and I am keen to watch it again for re-evaluation purposes.
I felt that the film was really floating on Natalie Portman's tenacious performance in the lead role....
...because all of the supporting characters were written as nothing more than walking stereotypes, and (with the exception of Barbara Hershey - who tried to inject some semblance of nuance into the cliched stage mother role, and only fitfully succeeded) the other actors mostly gave "join-the-dots" performances in playing their hackneyed roles.
Unlike some people here, I do watch/read a lot of psych thrillers and I enjoy them when they are done well... and because of this I could see where the film was headed from a very early stage, and found it all rather predictable.
Having said all this, I think that Portman deserves an Academy Award for her layered, frightfully intense performance. It's the single thing that kept me watching, that kept me compelled - that and the cinematography/soundtrack/choreography, which are all technically brilliant in and of themselves... even though I felt that the stellar production values and Portman's performance seemed to exist to disguise a thin script.
To be honest, as far as "psych thrillers" go, I preferred the more recently released "Unknown" to "Black Swan"....
"Unknown" is just as gimmicky and formulaic, in it's own way, as "Black Swan" - the difference is that "Unknown" was an unpretentious thriller that didn't seem to be pretending to be something more than it was.
"Black Swan" is ultimately very pretentious, and really isn't as deep as I had been lead to expect from the many laudatory reviews of it.
Maybe I'm being cynical and I went in with expectations that were too high.... but I really wouldn't reccommend this film to anybody, unless they are hardcore Portman/Hershey/Ballet fans...
13 years ago
Fri Feb 25 2011, 08:21pm
I also found it very... confronting, for lack of a better word.
Natalie Portman's acting was convincing for me, however I found the story very confusing; perhaps it's just my friend and I who didn't have a clue? These psych thrillers always mess with the head...
I liked that it was a real-life twist on Swan Lake - how Nina was the innocent White Swan to begin with, then gradually morphs into the Black Swan, and then... well.
However the costumes, choreography etc. were quite stunning. I think it's a movie you have to watch again to fully understand.
I suppose I liked the movie - very creepy, though.
I had a bit of an overthink moment, where I got distracted by the psychological inaccuracies of it all.
I had trouble coming to an accurate diagnosis for her, I assume Schizophrenia, but it was rather a sudden and flagrant psychotic break...and she didn't have any of the other symptoms, disordered speech, catatonia, flattened affect..
Also, did anyone else have trouble believing you could dance two scenes from swan lake whilst bleeding to death?
