Alternate Takes: “Black Swan”
Found a really interesting site: Alternate Takes. Their mission:
Welcome to Alternate Takes, a place for exciting and in-depth discussions of all aspects of cinema. Unlike other film review sites, we review the new films not once, but twice. The first review is essentially an evaluation, giving away as little as possible to the potential viewers. These are graded with our own personal ratings system: a mark out of 10 compiled from two separate ones of 5 — one based on filmmaking, one on personal enjoyment. This is a review to read before you see the film.
When you return from the cinema, you can then read our Alternate Take: a longer, more in-depth examination that discusses whatever it was that we found to be most interesting about the film.
I took them up on the offer and in the process found the best review I’ve read yet about Black Swan, specifically because it addresses some of the issues I had with the movie: namely how it rather bluntly lumps together numerous familiar themes (e.g., manipulative mentor-student, narcissistic mother-daughter) and genres (i.e., horror, thriller, drama) — I expressed some of my thoughts here. The reviewer James MacDowell argues that’s pretty much precisely the point:
I want to talk here a little about the basic question of how Black Swan is asking us to view it, and thus how we should evaluate it.
By and large, people who dislike this film seem to think that it takes itself more seriously than it should — that is, they believe it sees itself as ‘art’ rather than a melodramatic, slightly sleazy genre picture. Those who love it, on the other hand, tend to appreciate it either precisely because it revels in ‘lowbrow’ pleasures, or because the fact that it’s so hysterically camped-up means it avoids attempting an entirely straight face. I count myself a member of the latter group, albeit with a few caveats.
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Every single one of Black Swan’s themes is not so much developed or hinted at, as might happen in an arthouse movie, but explicitly stated, repeated, and insisted upon. It quickly becomes clear that, for example, the mirrors are not being used as a visual motif that symbolically suggest split personality, but rather as devices that openly express that split personality: Nina’s mirror-image becomes detached from her own, and she eventually uses a shard of mirror to stab Lily. The central themes of duality and the pursuit of artistic perfection are not things we are expected to somehow work out, but things we are told about: within the first twenty minutes Thomas has laid out the hardly complicated white/black swan dichotomy, and Nina has said that she just wants to be “perfect”. The remainder of the film proceeds to work through these themes brazenly, using the plot of the ballet as a guide (which, again, is helpfully synopsized for us in the opening), until they lead to the movie’s wholly unavoidable conclusion. So much for subtlety.
To criticize the movie for being obvious or lacking depth, though, is to ignore the fact that the very obviousness of all the symbolism is wholly fitting for Black Swan, which never hopes to be anything other than an archetypal story combined out of various different genres: fairytale, horror, melodrama, and so on. All these types of stories contain symbolism, but it is symbolism of a particular kind — a direct, visceral sort of symbolism which the reader or viewer could never be expected to struggle to see, but is instead offered to us fully-formed: the link between sex and death offered by vampires, say. It is only possible to accuse this film of being shallow if you hope that it will convey something ‘deep’, and by this we usually mean something that is not immediately obvious — something a viewer can pat themselves on the back for discovering.
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As with any film, this movie’s achievement lies not in its meanings but in the way it makes its meanings. Black Swan does what it sets out to do extremely well. Some clearly wished that it had attempted something different and judged it a failure on these terms. Others have recognized the simplicity of the film’s basic elements but still suggested that it somehow manages to exceed them: for instance, Manohla Dargis speaks in the New York Times of “those clichés, which Aronofsky embraces, exploits and, by a squeak, finally transcends”. Yet there is no need to transcend a cliché if it is conveyed with such impressive force.
At bottom, this is exactly what it seems: a blunt and beautiful story of a woman pushed to insanity by unrealistic and dangerous demands: to be both a ‘perfect’ artist and, in the process, the ‘perfect’ embodiment of an age-old virgin/whore dichotomy. That is all, and it’s more than enough. Neither original nor complicated in conception, this project is executed in practice with a power and flare that is no less valuable for being direct. To ask for anything else is to desire to watch a different kind of movie.
This review of Black Swan, unlike some I’ve read, at least acknowledges the issues that kept me at arm’s length from the story. Having read MacDowell’s piece, it’s convinced me to screen the movie again — which I think is precisely one of the points of “Alternate Takes.”
To read all of MacDowell’s alternate take on Black Swan, go here. And bookmark the site while you’re there. Seems like an excellent resource.
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