Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Black Swan 2010, (Grade B-)


Director: Darren Aronofsky
Any Awards?  Has received lots of nominations -- and it won some Golden Globes--time will tell if will get more.
Cast: Natalie Portman; Mila Kunis; Vincent Cassel; Barbara Hershey; Winona Ryder; Benjamin Millepied. Ksenia Solo, Kristina Anapau, Janet Montgomery, Sebastian Stan

Plot: Ambitious New York City ballet dancer Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) lands the lead in "Swan Lake" but soon thinks her dreams of stardom are threatened by a rival ballerina (Mila Kunis). As opening night approaches and the pressure to be perfect builds, Nina's obsession descends into paranoia and delusion.  

sez says: this movie has gotten a lot of hype. I went expecting much more than it delivered.  Portman's ability to dance is impressive --but the story is really not very interesting. Mom  (Barbara Hershey), who is a littl like ALan Bate's mom in Psycho, has keep her ballerina daughter infantialized by treating her like a little girl. But she is a woman and she needs to connect to her own sexuality to bloom as a dancer in the role of The Swan Queen--and she has to overcome this problem while under pressure to be the next big thing in the world of ballet.  She hallucinates and can't tell reality from her paranoid fantasies.  Oh-hum. Original? only sort-of.  It was mildly interesting. 

mjc says:  In an effort to create a psychotic world for the protagonist, characters surrounding her were so distorted that there was no reality left to check the psychosis against--thus the film failed to move me

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