A dissection of Black Swan *Spoilers Within*

I've been ruminating on my interpretation of Black Swan, and I can no longer wait to share it with you. Spoilers be found here, so if ye hath not seen Black Swan, venture no further.

A lot of people have been panning the movie because they feel it's trite, saying that artistic perfection can only be found in death, the ultimate sacrifice.
I don't think that the movie was saying that artistic perfection can only come through death.
Nina killed herself because the only two futures she saw for herself was that of Winona's has-been ballerina or her mother's miserable never-was ballerina.
The character of Lily was a happy ballet dancer, Nina projected her own issues onto Lily. Lily was serving as the foil. Showing that someone can simply be a ballerina and not a total nutcase.
Nina was not simply a perfectionist. She was psychotic. She was self-mutilating from an early age, and her mother's response was to simply cut her nails shorter. She'd been stewing in her own private obsession for years, and was totally isolated thanks to her mother. Even with the role of her dreams, Nina could not allow herself to relax and be happy.
We were never, not once, supposed to look at Nina as an every woman. We are not supposed to identify with her. She is an anti-hero.

The masseuse in the beginning tells her that she's holding all of her tension in her diaphragm, it's no coincidence that she stabs herself in the diaphragm at the climax. The motion the masseuse makes with her hand into Nina's diaphragm directly foreshadows the stabbing that occurs later on. Whens he stabs herself, Nina is attempting to exorcise her own demons through blood sacrifice because she is not willing to sacrifice her career in the interest of her own health. She isn't trying to heal herself. Her journey of self-destruction is complete, and only that is what satisfies her. Nina had always viewed sacrifice as perfection, in her mother, in Winona Ryder's character- that is why she could never allow herself any small happiness or indulgence. Whether it be a piece of cake or an orgasm.

People have read misogyny into this film. I do not think the director hates women at all. I think he recognizes them as human. I think he was showing how damaging all of the pressure put on women to "do it all" can be. Nina represents our unrealistic expectations of ourselves- you cannot make yourself perfect, you can only die trying.
Perfection is not what we should aspire to, we should aspire to be healthy and happy. Sacrifice and pain is not the path to achievement.

I have also read criticisms that the characters are too stereotypical. But I think there's a reason for that. I think this film is a bit of an ink blot. Interpretations will vary, and I always love movies like that.
If it was meant to be allegorical, then broadly painted "type" characters are appropriate. We know stage mothers, predatory bosses, bad girls, etc. We don't need that much character development to recognize them immediately. And if the performances or characters are complex, it narrows the room for interpretation.
Was her mother really so overbearing, or was she a projection of Nina's self-destructive emotions?
Did the ballet director really regularly seduce his leads, or was Nina (so afraid of her own sexuality but clearly very attracted to him) simply painting him that way so that she could stay chaste?
We know Lily wasn't nearly as wicked and sexual as Nina was perceiving her, so this makes me give the other characters the same benefit of the doubt.
If those characters were more developed and complex, I wouldn't be able to wonder that. That's the beauty of the allegory.

My interpretation was that Nina's perception of reality was so perverse that none of the characters were operating under the motives we thought they were. It was simply Nina's paranoia and projection that was turning the world against her. I think this is most interesting in the case of Nina's mother. We, as a society, love to blame parents for the faults of their children, but that can be a mistake. Granted, her mother probably should have sought therapy for her daughter when Nina was scratching herself, but her mother could have been simply naive. Assuming the scratches were accidental isn't a stretch, it's realistic. It was also unclear to me if the portraits Nina's mother was painting were of Nina or of herself. I wonder if it was intentionally left ambiguous, or if it didn't matter. If Nina's mother truly was a stage-mother, then she simply would have seen Nina as an extension of herself, so a portrait of Nina is really a portrait of herself, and vice versa. Or, if they were all self-portraits, perhaps her mother was too consumed by her own failed dreams and depression to even notice that something was wrong with Nina. She may have just been going through the motions, supporting her daughter, and not really concerning herself with whether or not Nina would succeed. She did not react critically or negatively when Nina first called her to say that she had not won the role of Swan Queen. Nina's mother seemed supportive in those moments. This leads me to believe that she was not so much an overbearing stage-mother, but depressed and fragile, being supportive but also content to play the martyr because she felt it would benefit Nina. Could Nina have lived on her own? I'm not sure how much a lead dancer in a ballet company gets paid, but it seems that Nina was very happy being in the nest. When she becomes defiant, it's like the defiance of a teenager- she's happy to take what her mother offers, but resents the rules and discipline that go along with it.
Of course the scene with the cake speaks volumes. Her mother is clearly unbalanced in one way or another. I just really enjoy how complex her character is once you truly think about it.

If you have different interpretations, please share them in the comments! All ideas are welcome.

A dissection of Black Swan *Spoilers Within*

Help Wanted

No, really. Wanted needs all the help it can get. Someone needs to do this movie a favor and give it one plausible plot component. For a movie about fabric there are are a whole lot of holes in the ridiculous plot.

This is the kind of film that fills you with questions. Questions such as:
Why is there only one woman in "The Fraternity"? Why would they even have a woman in something called "The Fraternity"?
Why would you suddenly like and try to emulate your absentee father because you find out he's a super-assassin?
I know how you got the rats in the dump truck, but how in the hell did you train them to disperse themselves evenly inside the textile mill once you dumped them in the courtyard? And how is it that the blast from the rats is strong enough to blow out all the windows, yet even the people we saw in close proximity to the rats were not harmed in any way by them exploding?
Why is there a butchery department in the textile mill?
Why would you go downstairs to fight the butcher guy and red-shirt-guy when the guy you really want to kill is upstairs?
If Morgan Freeman has been manufacturing names out of the textile machine for years, why would you believe him when he told you your name came up?
How, exactly, does fate work a textile machine? What does fate do while the textile machine is off? How did The Fraternity get these codes a thousand years ago when they were manually weaving the textiles? When you manually weave textiles, any flaws in the fabric results from your mistake. That's not fate, it's your shoddy workmanship!

Wanted is also the kind of film that makes you realize you're much smarter than most screenwriters assume you are. You know bullets can't curve, no matter how wildly you flail the gun around while firing. You know that the human heart can only beat so many times before it would just explode from pressure. You know that you can't shoot a single bullet through the heads of several people standing in a circle. That bullet would not only have to be curving, but extraordinarily strong and travelling at a speed few hand guns can produce.

James McAvoy's character, Wesley, has a fat lady for a boss, who is cruel to him because he doesn't complete his work in a timely manner. Rather than maybe think that her treatment of him is due to his poor work ethic and productivity, he immediately jumps to the conclusion that she's giving him a hard time because people used to give her a hard time for being heavy. Here's how he tells her off:
   "Wesley: [yelling to Janice] Shut the fuck up!
   [the office grows quiet]
   She has one single iota of tenuous power. She thinks she can push everyone around.


   [grabs Janice's stapler]


   Wesley: You don't need this.


   [throws stapler into the wall of his cubicle]


   I understand. Junior high must've been kind of tough, but it doesn't give you the right to treat your workers like horseshit, Janice. I know we laugh at you, Janice. We all know you keep a stash of jelly donuts in the top drawer of your desk. But I want you to know, if you weren't such a bitch, we'd feel sorry for you. I do feel sorry for you. But as it stands, the way you behave - I feel I can speak for the entire office when I tell you... go fuck yourself"

Now, there are several problems with this. He doesn't know how long Janice has been heavy. He mockingly calls her "anorexic" in the opening narration. Riiiight, because only skinny people have eating disorders.
But the thing that really gets me is that he tells her that "if you weren't such a bitch, we'd feel sorry for you." Feel sorry for her??? Not that they'd like her, not that they'd be friends with her if she were nicer? Get real. She's overweight! Apparently, all you do for a nice fat girl is feel bad for her, right?
It could not be more obvious that this movie was written by a group of men.

Further evidence: Wesley's girlfriend is sleeping with his best friend. Wesley concludes that this is because she's a bitch and his best friend is a jerk. The only time we see Wesley with his girlfriend, he tells us that her voice is annoying. He also leaves for assassin camp and doesn't bother to tell her where he's going. When he finally shows back up, she starts yelling at him. This is understandable. If the person you're living with disappears with no explanation, you'd have some choice words for them the next time you saw them. Then Angelina Jolie breezes in and makes out with Wesley, to show off to his ex. Sure, because if your loser ex-boyfriend, who seemingly never really liked you anyways, dropped off the face of the Earth then showed up with some tattooed brunette, you'd suddenly realize "you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone". Another keen summary of the female condition! The screenwriters must be an expert on women. It's like they're in my head!

The screenwriters also love video games. Wesley fights through the bad guys at the end. Each bad guy has an increased level of difficulty in killing, and he must use different fighting techniques for each of them. After he's killed all the level bosses bad guys, he gets to the big boss leader of The Fraternity. That's when things get interesting, and by interesting I mean defying all logic.

But there's a silver lining. The effects are fantastic, barring some obviously computer-generated rats. The awesomeness of the stunts and special effects is almost enough to make you forget about how insulting the plot is to your intelligence. Almost. Not quite.

You'll love this movie if you liked The Matrix, hate women, and are missing half your brain.

P.S. Morgan Freeman, Laurence Fishburne pwns you when it comes to action movies. Think about that.
Angelina Jolie, I really liked Tomb Raider, in spite of myself. This is how you repay me?

Help Wanted

Frost/Nixon

I don't have a clever title for this review. Big whoop, wanna fight about it?

Frost/Nixon was nominated for a slew of awards. It's a solid picture: Good acting, excellent writing and a compelling true story as its base. The filmmakers made an excellent choice in sparing us the typical true story format. It's not narrated in hindsight by a single character. It's also not single character POV. There are mock-documentary style interviews with all the key players mixed in with the scenes of action.
The editing and direction creats a quick moving tempo and the feeling of mounting tension is so good that you'll forget that you already know how it ends. The viewer feels all the antici... pation of the final interview.

I'm not usually a big fan of recent American history films. Good Night and Good Luck and Capote come to mind as movies I truly wanted to like. I tried so hard to make it through them and while I fully appreciated their storytelling and acting, I was rather bored.

Frost/Nixon suceeds much in the way that Apollo 13 did. There's a chemistry and electricity built into every aspect of the film: the score, the acting, the dialogue, the cinematography. It's palpable and keeps me engaged and even on the edge of my seat. That's what makes or breaks a film: It's ability to keep you on the edge of your seat even if you know how the story plays out.
Like a good book, a good film's story should feel new and enjoyable no matter how many times you've seen it.

Other elements that make this movie great: An actor playing Nixon without a silly fake rubber nose. Kevin Bacon as a character so similar to the one he plays in A Few Good Men that you'll want to shout at him "You're a lousy fucking softball player, Jack!". Grown men having conversations about shoes. Delicious set dressing and costumes.

Frost/Nixon

My so called autism.

I know what you're thinking: Claire Danes, Noel? You're telling me that Claire Danes is a good actress?

Yes. I am. Don't strap me to the gurney yet, hear me out. See Temple Grandin.

Turns out that Claire Danes can do more than portray angsty misfit women with ennui.

I know what you're thinking now, too: But Noel, is another misfit girl really that far of a stretch?
Yes. It is.

Claire Danes successfully fills out Temple's western shirts and dungarees with raw emotion and boundless charm.

This film is remarkable in very many ways. First is that Temple Grandin is a real person with real autism who is really remarkable. Secondly, Temple's accomplishments are not things that you or I take for granted. Few could do what she does. She doesn't catch up, she excels. Lastly, we watch from Temple's perspective, we feel what she feels. The POV makes her, in every way, our equal. So, this is no Forrest Gump, Rainman or Simple Jack.

Temple Grandin harnessed the unique abilities autism bestowed on her to revolutionize the cattle industry. She was blessed with not only her amazing mind, but a network of family, teachers and friends who compromise her safety net. Them, and a "squeeze machine".

The movie is fun, funny, touching and inspirational. The ways that the director and editor give us Temple's perspective is inventive and poetic. It's enjoyable and exceedingly watchable in a way most biopics can never hope to be. It will appeal to audiences of all ages.

HBO has shown itself to be no slouch when it comes to commissioning biopics. I thought they couldn't top Grey Gardens. I was wrong. Claire Danes has some awards coming her way for this one.
(More on Grey Gardens in the future. Two incredible movies about two of the most fascinating people you can imagine.)

My so called autism.

A flock of seagulls

Get it? "And I raaaan..."
It's okay, I'm aware of what a lame joke that is.

Ran
What do you get when one of the most revered filmmakers of all time decides to make his most expensive production and base it on a mix of true story and one of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies?
One fucking hell of a movie.

Ran is in color. It won a Best Costume Academy Award. Kurosawa was influenced by the beautiful robes used in traditional Japanese Noh theatre. The costumes are gorgeous. When you see Lady Kaede sweep into the room, be prepared to drool over her amazing kimonos. Be prepared to appreciate the three sons, each always dressed in the same primary color in a way that must make the Power Rangers hang their heads in shame.

But that's only the beginning of the stunning use of color. This film is so beautiful that it almost contradicts the insanely ugly acts it depicts.

Kurosawa read that a great Japanese warlord once decided to retire and distribute his lands to his three loyal sons. His rationale being that while one arrow can easily be broken, three arrows bundled together are unbreakable. Kurosawa knew this wasn't true, so he started imagining what would happen if the three sons weren't so loyal. That's where King Lear comes in.

This film was a long time coming. Kurosawa wrote it and let it sit until he thought he was ready to make it. It took a very long time to get financing for this film. It's quite the epic.

The film opens on an aging war lord, Hidetora, his sons and his court all out on a boar hunt. After they fell the beast, they sit and have lunch. The war lord seems like a wise and benevolent ruler. His two sons Taro and Jiro seem obediant and loyal. His youngest son, Saburo, seems like a jerk.
The film's title means chaos. Chaos is basically what occurs after Hidetora decides to divide the kingdom amongst his sons. Hidetora's folly is that he believes all the semblances I just described.

If you've read or seen King Lear, you know how this is going to go down. Except that there's a massive battle sequence with more incredibly red blood tossed over extras than you have ever seen. There's no way there was any red dye left in Japan after this movie wrapped.
Kurosawa shows us war at its ugliest. This is a full-on massacre. It's so epic, so bloody, so unbelievably tragic and violent that you're glued to the screen. After a little while you start to wonder "How is there anyone left to kill?". Kurosawa built an exact replica of a Japanese castle by a mountain for this film. We get to see it ransacked and burned to the ground. You wait for mercy, none will come. Mercilessness is at the heart of this movie.

Hidetora became lord of the country by waging a merciless war against his rivals. He raised his sons on this merciless warfare, he stole their wives for them by mercilessly killing their families and burning their castles. He rules through fear. And now, he must reap what he has sewn. Karma will be merciless.

This film is a brilliant meditation on legacy and loyalty. When we are at the end of our lives, we can see our past clearly for the first time. One cannot leave behind a legacy of peace if one lived a life of war. One cannot expect order when one has created only chaos.

Watch the environment around the characters carefully. The elements themselves belie the action of the film. Fore roars, clouds rumble, wind howls and rain pours. The Gods are trying desperately to do something, anything...

(btw- there's lots of seppuku, I figured it made it an appropriate follow-up to Hara Kiri)

A flock of seagulls

To Sir, with honor...

If you only watch one movie about samurais and revenge this year, it just has to be Hara Kiri.

Hara Kiri takes place in post-fuedal Japan. After the warring lords laid down their arms and the Empire took hold, many samurais were left jobless. In a peaceful Japan there was little work for hired swords.
Now, per the samurai code, there is no honor in a life of poverty and there is even greater dishonor in a death from poverty. Therefore, the only way to meet one's end as a true warrior was to commit hara kiri. If you don't know the deal with hara kiri (AKA seppuku), I give you this excerpt from the Wikipedia article:

"In time, committing seppuku came to involve a detailed ritual. This was usually performed in front of spectators if it was a planned seppuku, not one performed on a battlefield. A samurai was bathed, dressed in white robes, and fed his favorite meal. When he was finished, his instrument was placed on his plate. Dressed ceremonially, with his sword placed in front of him and sometimes seated on special cloths, the warrior would prepare for death by writing a death poem.

With his selected attendant (kaishakunin, his second) standing by, he would open his kimono (robe), take up his tantō (knife) or wakizashi (short sword)—which the samurai held by the blade with a portion of cloth wrapped around so that it would not cut his hand and cause him to lose his grip—and plunge it into his abdomen, making a left-to-right cut. The kaishaku would then perform dakikubi, a cut in which the warrior was all but decapitated (akin to a coup de grâce. The maneuver is done such that a slight band of flesh is left attaching the head to the body). Because of the precision necessary for such a maneuver, the second was a skilled swordsman. The principal agreed in advance when the kaishakunin was to make his cut. Usually dakikubi would occur as soon as the dagger was plunged into the abdomen. The process became so highly ritualised that as soon as the samurai reached for his blade the kaishakunin would strike. Eventually even the blade became unnecessary and the samurai could reach for something symbolic like a fan and this would trigger the killing stroke from his second.

This elaborate ritual evolved after seppuku had ceased being mainly a battlefield or wartime practice and become a para-judicial institution (see next section).

The second was usually, but not always, a friend. If a defeated warrior had fought honorably and well, an opponent who wanted to salute his bravery would volunteer to act as his second."

That's an honorable death. A methodical and glorious suicide.
Go big or go home, I guess.

So, word starts to get around Japan that a samurai went to a lord's house and asked for permission to commit hara kiri on the grounds. The lord and his advisers cringe at the thought of this spectacle, so they give the samurai some money and ask him to go somewhere else.
This story gets to some down-and-out samurai, and they decide to do something very similar, and very stupid, in hopes of receiving some charity.
A lord's advisers and samurai hear of this disgraceful disception and decide to treat anyone who comes to their grounds with a similar objective, very uncharitably. And what goes around, comes around.

What occurs, I really cannot spoil for you, but I promise you that it will be hard to watch.

No one takes revenge like a samurai. This a flawless and artistic movie about honor, desperation and loss. It's about what is worth living for, and what is worth dying for. Most of all, it's about the courage to know when there's no way out except on top of one's own sword.

The movie was made in the '60s but it feels fresh and exciting. It's black and white, but when the blood spills your imagination fills in what the monochrome leaves out.

Watch this movie.

To Sir, with honor...

The black knight always triumphs!

Have at you!

I bought The Dark Knight on DVD. I almost never buy DVDs. There are so many movies out there that I haven't seen that I can rarely rationalize buying one I already have seen with the intention of watching it several more times in the future. My eyes were opened by Dr. Noletti at Framingham State who watches hundreds of movies each year. His voracious appetite for films made me realize that if I resigned myself to buying every movie I liked, I would eventually get to that point where anything new might not interest me.

I now try to watch movies whenever I can, and I don't select the movies based on whether or not I think I'll enjoy them. I'm working my way through the American Film Institute's 100 Greatest list in the hopes of at least getting all of those under my belt in the next year.

I watched Audition, a film that explores the vulnerability and trust that love induces. Much of the film is so surreal that I cannot definitively say what was real and what was imagined by the protaginist. I think something might have been lost in translation. Like A Tale of Two Sisters, I get the feeling that Western films have a habit of tying up every single little loose end in a way that foreign films don't. I'm not sure if this is a limitation or an advantage. It certainly limits the kind of narration a film has. In these two films, it seemed we were only seeing what the protagonist saw. There are dream sequences, and it's implied later that the dream sequences were omnipotent episodes in the narration. The protagonist suddenly gets a glimpse of something they were unaware of, or something that has or will happen. So it's not like a break in narration that occurs in Western film that contains an omnipotent aside that the audience is privey to, but not the protagonist.
The audience has all of the same information as the protagonist. This creates a unique sympathy for the protagonist. Yet, my Western-trained mind could help but wonder: What was true in the dream and what wasn't? How and why does this character have psychic dreams?
It's very A Christmas Carol, the ghosts of the past, present and future visit us in our dreams and enlighten us. Yet, it's not explained explicity so. I had to gather after much thought that these surreal, yet truthful, dream sequences are a deus ex machina to the plot that is readliy accepted by the intended (foreign) audience of this film. It relies entirely on the suspension of disbelief. This is difficult to understand coming from a Western-trained viewpoint, where dream sequences almost exclusively deal with the surreal and UNtrue. The protagonist wakes up and we sigh with relief, it was only a dream. It was not real.
In these films when the protagonist wakes up, we are supposed to feel the building fear. Their dream was surreal, but it was the truth. They must now take action based on their dream, and use their new-found knowledge to get a leg up on the antagonist or at least to fully understand the current events.

I would love to conduct a research study on the validity in the contents of dream sequences in movies in different cultures. Perhaps we Westerners don't give our dreams enough credit. Our dreams could be trying to tell us something.

The black knight always triumphs!

Snakes on my plane

In honor of the late great Paul Newman I got The Verdict via Netflix. If you liked The Untouchables or A Few Good Men you'll love The Verdict. It's the story of a Boston attorney who's just hit rock bottom when the case of a lifetime falls in his lap. It is the ultimate underdog story. Superb script and they just don't make movies like this anymore.

I saw a preview for the new Tom Cruise movie Valkyrie. At first I thought it was a joke. Who puts a protagonist- or an antagonist for that matter- in an eye patch? A secret plot to kill Hitler? Lots of explosions? Come on! Then, I went online and found out that it's based on actual events. Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg , a Nazi, loses an eye, his right hand and two fingers from his left hand in a battle in Africa. Once back in Germany, he and other high-ranking German officers convince Hitler that if he should die, their government would fall apart. So they should form a shadow government, just in case (Operation Valkyire). Claus becomes a sympathizer with the resistance and he and the other shadow government members decide to take out Hitler and surrender to the Allie Forces.
If you were selecting someone to assassinate the most powerful and frightening man in the world, would you send a one-handed, one-eyed, veteran? I need more convincing on this.
Apparently what drew Cruise to this project was the similarity between his profile and that of the real-life Claus. I'm thinking he looked at this script and said to himself:
"My career is making a slow comeback after my comedy turn in Tropic Thunder. What could be more likable than a Nazi who has a change of heart and tries to kill Hitler and *SPOILER* ends up sacrificing his own life? Green light!"
I might be judging this one a little harshly. It could just be a case of a terrible trailer. Let us hope.

Snakes on my plane

The sleeping monster

So, if you don't know, David Sedaris is a genius. If you do know, then go get his new book When You Are Engulfed in Flames. I dare you to read it without laughing out loud. If you tell me you didn't, I shall slap your face with my dainty white glove and call you a liar, my good sir.
The only thing about the book that troubled me was to learn of Mr. Sedaris' love of spiders. I fear nothing more than spiders- well, except maybe death, with first place going to death by spiders. I've seen Mr. Sedaris lecture on two occasions. Both were glorious, in ways that could be described but it would take far too long. It is heartening to pick up a book, and in the author see a reflection of your exact sense of humor. It makes you feel less alone.

For Father's Day, my dad, my brother and I went to see "The Incredible Hulk". I had not wanted to see this movie, because I liked Ang Lee's "Hulk". Sure it had outrageous action sequences involving gamma radioactive dogs, but it also had the driving force of a brilliant director. It was a haunting character study about isolation. "The Incredible Hulk" seemed like a franken-movie. Two movies sewn together as shoddily as the pants the big green guy wears. One half of the movie is about Ed Norton as Bruce Banner, alone, a fugitive, wisecraking, genius scientist, separated from his true love. The other half of the movie is Peter Jackson's "King Kong" with some army guys and a green ape. Seriously. The Hulk even brings Betty, Steven Tyler's daughter, to a rocky cave and then steps out front to get his alpha-male on by roaring at the night. All that was missing was the chest pounding. The moody half that actually had a decent story, even the weird Frankenstein sub-story of William Hurt and Tim Roth. Oh, except for when the general actually says "What have I done?" I think they could have been a little more creative. All that said, I have made a decision. You cannot make a Hulk movie that will ever be great. The big green monster trashing tanks, explosions, it doesn't fit well with the mild-mannered scientist story. Why? Because the movie spends so much time making us like Bruce, that it seems impossible he has the Hulk inside him. The Hulk is meant to be in Bruce the whole time. Bruce probably picks bar fights and gets his ass whooped. He has little man syndrome, and he just gets angrier and angrier, stuffing that angry down. One day, some gamma sets the rage free. The Hulk is green for a reason. He IS envy. He envies the big and the strong, and so he hates them. So, Hulk smash. That's why I could accept Lee's Hulk. He had repressed memories and repressed anger. That Bruce was just waiting to snap.
I have consumed numerous movies since I last posted. So, I have lots more to share.

News bulletin: The Seventh Seal is on demand for free right now through Comcast. You watch, you learn, you ask yourself "If he got it so very right, so long ago, why are crappy movies still made?"

The sleeping monster