Black Swan

[angstbunny]

Been wanting to watch this for the longest time, but just never could get around to it. I really enjoyed it, though creeped out. Mirrors infest the movie, and I am creeped out by mirrors. It's not a phobia per se, but I don't particularly care for them, so all the mirror shenanigans were like DNW. Natalie Portman did an excellent job. I feel like

Comments

[aurora_84]

I think that's just a roundabout way of saying that I've been hanging around ONTD too often these days, hahaha.
Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! I heart Nathalie, haters to the left.

[angstbunny]

Like I said, when you have legit reasons, that's fine. Her support for Polanski is more than enough to earn her disgust from me. But a lot of the times, I find that people hate her because she's "uppity" which is basically code for "woman who doesn't know her place." That, I have an issue with.

[angstbunny]

Every chick is uppity at ONTD.

[bluerosefairy]

I really see all the places where it's a companion piece to The Wrestler.

That's exactly what I came out of it thinking. I love the way Aronofsky gets the sacrifice of the body and the twisted justifications for it in both contexts. I feel the weight issues were SO female the way the steroid scenes were SO male.

Some of the reviews led me to believe that the ending comes out of nowhere, and that frustrates me, because I was almost expecting something REALLY REALLY bizarre or made no narrative sense, but the ending is EXACTLY as it should be

Exactly. That ending was perfect, and it was precisely what should have happened, both narratively and symbolically. Actually, what drove me nuts was the same people glorifying the ending of The Wrestler, but proclaiming the ending of Black Swan incomprehensible.

[angstbunny]

And I like that he doesn't glorify any of it, either male or female. There is no glory. I mean, there is a sense of accomplishment, with Randy getting that one last shot, with Nina attaining perfection, but there is equally a sense of sacrifice, both of self and others. It's not something admirable. But it's interesting how much Randy has an outward radius while Nina doesn't. Randy has hurt the people around him, as well as himself, whereas Nina's destruction is very self-directed. In that sense, it's also very gendered.

I don't know how you can get the ending of one and not the other. I mean, LOL, they're practically THE SAME ENDING. The dive into oblivion, the chanting of the audience. Come the fuck on.

[redfiona99]

Re: Portman's acting - I like her, and the only time I've seen her give a bad performance is in the Star Wars prequels, and I don't hold those against her because everyone had a bad day in the office there except Frank Oz and Christopher Lee.

Re: People hating on Natalie Portman - Don't forget that she's an upitty Jewish bitch. (facepalm) (This came up recently when she went 'I refuse to wear anything to do with John Galliano anymore after he went nutso anti-Semitic'. Mysteriously, if someone out there said he wanted to wipe out all members of my race, I'd probably not wear stuff he designed either) There are people out there who really need to reconsider what they write sometimes.

[angstbunny]

Hahaha, yeah, she was REALLY bad in the SW prequels, but EVERYONE was bad.

I haven't seen anybody berating her for turning away from Galliano, but I can believe it. I can see how antisemitism can also fuel the dislike for her, which is also just as not cool.

Added note

[redfiona99]

I also want to make it clear that I'm sure some people (like yesdrizella) have perfectly good reasons for disliking Natalie Portman.