Black Swan

This Avengers movie is really getting out of hand

Grade: A –

Director: Darren Aronofsky

Starring: Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel, Barbara Hershey, and Winona Ryder

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hour, 48 minutes

“We open…with Swan Lake. Done to death, I know. But not like this.”

In a film steeped in doppelgangers, ballet director Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel) may as well be channeling film director Darren Aronofsky as he makes this introductory – and slyly foreshadowing – pronouncement to his company in Black Swan. Indeed, the contentious relationship between Leroy and his new prima ballerina, Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman), embodies the symbiotic, sometimes parasitic bond between artist and muse…or a filmmaker and his leading actress.

Yet, that allegory is but the amuse-bouche to a thematic feast. Set against the backdrop of a New York City production of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, Black Swan recounts the ballet’s plot through a contemporary idiom using the same “story within a story” format found in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Red Shoes. The film opens with a literal rendering of the ballet’s prologue, during which Rothbart casts a spell that turns a princess into a virtuous white swan.

The scene cuts directly to Nina waking in the apartment she shares with her domineering mother, Erica (Barbara Hershey). Nina is one of several ballerinas auditioning for the role of the Swan Queen, but while Leroy is confident Nina can capture the innocence and grace of the White Swan, he worries she cannot exude the sensuality needed to perform her carnal twin, the Black Swan.

An uneasy relationship develops between the seemingly chaste Nina and her licentious understudy, Lily (Mila Kunis). Their rivalry expands into a twisted acquaintance as Nina – prodded by Leroy, curiosity, and internal demons – taps into her dark side and confronts the duality of her damaged psyche.

Black Swan exhibits the physical and emotional toll performers often suffer in pursuit of their art, a trait it shares with Aronofsky’s The Wrestler and one undoubtedly endured by Portman, who trained for months in preparation for this Oscar-worthy tour de force.

This concept of destruction as a necessary precursor to creation is revisited throughout the film, whether it’s Nina’s ascension at the expense of boozy, aging marquee ballerina Beth Macintyre (Winona Ryder, her very presence symbolic) or her forceful defiance of her maternal figure in order to unlock the sexual awakening needed along her path to artistic achievement.

Moreover, implications of Nina’s sexual abuse and self-mutilation serve as the backdrop for her compulsion to attain creative perfection. Aronofsky juxtaposes sexual maturation, particularly in a male-dominated culture, with ballet’s concurrent idealization and objectification of femininity. Shadows of Roman Polanski’s Repulsion are cast throughout: the insinuation that Nina fornicated with strange men in a bar draws a violent rebuke from her mother, and when Nina finally awakens her inner Black Swan, it comes only with the aid of sapphic stimulation.

There are parallels between Erica and Piper Laurie’s mommy dearest in Carrie, also a film about menstrual angst. As Nina prepares for the final pas de deux, a wound in the shape of a blossoming, crimson flower forms conspicuously near her lower abdomen. “I felt it,” she whispers as the final chord sounds, a smile of ecstasy creeping across her face. The crowd roars its approval as they – like we – demand more, no matter the price.

Neil Morris

*Originally published at http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/a-thematic-feast-in-black-swan/Content?oid=1884498

The Ghost Writer

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Grade: A –

Director: Roman Polanski

Starring: Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan, Kim Cattrall, Tom Wilkerson, and Olivia Williams

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 2 hours, 8 minutes

Roman Polanski continues to use the silver screen to both explicate and exorcise his personal demons. From surviving Nazi persecution as a child in the Kraków ghetto to the brutal murder of his wife Sharon Tate at the hands of the Manson family to his conviction – and subsequent flight from sentencing – for having sex with a 13-year-old girl, Polanski’s real-life travails have informed and defined his film oeuvre.

Reportedly, Polanski had to complete editing of The Ghost Writer from the confines of a jail cell and then under house arrest at his Swiss chalet as he fights extradition back to the United States. In his grand return to the modern thriller (his first since 1988’s Frantic), a former British prime minister, Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan), finds himself living as a virtual exile in a foreign land, partly to escape prosecution for legitimate charges nonetheless brought in a kangaroo court by accusers with duplicitous motives. Sound familiar? There is a lot more than a Napoleon complex going on in Polanski’s mind when Lang’s wife, Ruth (Olivia Williams), compares her husband’s hermetic life on a windswept patch of Martha’s Vineyard to Bonaparte’s banishment to the island of St. Helena.

That other unique and proverbial Polanski archetype – the inquisitive, self-assured loner who foolhardily believes he has a grasp on matters that are actually well beyond his comprehension – comes in the form of a nameless author credited as “The Ghost” (Ewan McGregor), hired as a replacement ghostwriter for Lang’s memoirs after the original scribe met an untimely death.

Lang is under investigation for sanctioning war crimes while in office, chiefly acts of rendition against terrorist suspects, and this premise propels the ghostwriter’s eventual efforts to connect the dots between his predecessor’s demise and the high-stakes political intrigue at play. It is worth comparing Polanski’s use of current events to Green Zone, Paul Greengrass’ polemical Iraq War actioner. Greengrass created fictitious characters and a plot whose unrealized purpose was to elucidate its real-life backdrop. By contrast, Polanski shrewdly exploits a topical controversy solely to service a fictional storyline, in the same way the real battle over water rights in California was mere window-dressing for the personal mystery and psychological drama at the center of Polanski’s Chinatown.

The Ghost Writer thrives on atmospherics, artistry, and acting. Polanski’s skills as a visual virtuoso remain in fine form. He brackets Ghost Writer with silent images portending unseen deaths – the first a shot of an abandoned car sitting alone on a ferry boat intercut with a body washed ashore bobbing in the surf; the last the sublime sight of hundreds of pieces of paper gradually being blown into view as they progressively litter a city street. In between, Polanski and screenwriter Robert Harris – adapting his own novel, The Ghost – fashion a plot that is both morose and pulpy. Accented by Alexandre Desplat’s haunting, orchestral score, Polanski constructs set pieces so tense and finely tuned that they would be labeled “Hitchcockian” if this was any other director.

McGregor reclaims much of his lost luster, ably supplying his role with the right blend of self-assuredness and vulnerability. Brosnan plays Lang as a cross between Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, while Williams is mesmerizing as the emotionally bruised but politically savvy first lady (shades of Hilary?). There are also sharp supporting turns from Kim Cattrall as Lang’s longtime assistant (and perhaps more), Timothy Hutton, James Belushi, Eli Wallach, and Tom Wilkinson as one of Lang’s shadowy acquaintances.

But the real star is Polanski. Whatever his personal travails, he remains a master filmmaker. And, neo-noirs like The Ghost Writer are not only his distinctive wheelhouse, but also a welcome throwback to clever, taut political-conspiracy thrillers. This is the old stuff…this is the good stuff.

Neil Morris