Black Swan

Someone must have had the idea of making a horror film about ballet. Quite a nifty idea, juxtaposing the high art world of ballet with the baroque world of horror. All that remained was to make the film. Black Swan is Darren Aronofsky's attempt to do it.

It is about a ballerina, Nina, played by Natalie Portman, who wants the lead part in a new production of Swan Lake. The film acknowledges that Swan Lake is the most obvious and hackneyed ballet that might have been chosen, but excuses it when the director, Thomas, played by Vincent Cassell, says that he wants this production to be pared back to basics. He believes that Nina is good on control and perfection, which suits the good white swan, but isn't so good at abandonment, which the bad black swan requires. Cassell brings some authority to his part, which is nevertheless underwritten and two-dimensional, embodying the cliches of ballet-masters we may have met  before in other films; being tyrannical, severe, cruel, unpredictable and heterosexually lecherous.

Nina doesn't fit in so very well with the other people in the dance company, seeming to be more sheltered and naive than them. It soon becomes clear that the stresses in her life are causing Nina to disconnect from reality: she imagines her body failing in strange ways, peeling improbable amounts of skin from her bleeding fingers, finding scars on her back, even her legs collapse under her weight, she discovers webs forming between her toes, she misconstrues or imagines encounters; and soon we realise that we cannot be sure what we are seeing, whether it is reality or the product of her imagination.

Nina lives with her her mother in a small and modest apartment. As soon as we see the mother the casting, makeup and acting tell us what Nina is in for from her. The mother is straight out of Hitchcock by way of Michael Haneke's The Piano Teacher. She doesn't disappoint, being overbearing, overcaring and over controlling, and that narrative strand plays out with no surprises.

This is not a film that respects the audience; it doesn't trust us to 'get' things without them being rammed down our throat. All the resources of cinema, particularly sound, hand-held close-up, and fast cutting are used to make sure our attention doesn't wander. The problem with this is that my attention did wander. There is a scene when Nina has a night on the town, doing drink, drugs and guys, and we go to a nightclub. It is the noisiest nightclub in a film that I can remember (thinking of Michael Mann's wonderful nightclub scene in Collateral, and the nightclub in Spike Lee's 25th Hour). The strobes strobe and the noise peels paint. Then there is a scene when, before an audience, Nina falls over as she dances. Now, as this was the first night, we can be sure that Thomas is in the wings watching anxiously and, when his lead ballerina falls over, we may be sure he's concerned and agitated. Aronofsky doesn't trust us to put these particular twos together, so we cut to his agitated face, just to make sure. God, it's so obvious. A better film-maker may have made us wait to see how his anxiety played out, but not here.

I'm sure Natalie Portman worked hard for this film, but even I could see that she's not a normally trained dancer because her shoulders don't have a dancer's mobility. This is not a very important point and it is not her dancing that makes or breaks the film. The part needs someone who can act and dance and she does very well. I was wondering why an actor who can't dance was chosen as opposed to vice versa, if that was the unavoidable choice.

My main problem with this film is that it cheats in setting up a narrative where we don't know what happened and anything is possible, and we get blood and sex and things leaping out of shadows. There is a scene when Thomas unexpectedly kisses Nina and she bites him. There is another scene where he invites her up to his apartment and we expect the terms of their relationship to be negotiated, probably horizontally, but he just asks her three questions and gives her homework. The three questions were 'do you have a boyfriend?', 'have you had many boyfriends?', 'are you a virgin?'. The homework is to go home and masturbate. I suppose this is so that she can practice her abandonment. In the next scene she is in her room at home, obediently masturbating, and we have a good opportunity to admire her teddy-bear collection (this is fortunate because in a later scene she puts them mercilessly down the garbage disposal chute). Then, my God, her mother comes into the room. Isn't this the number one cliche of all time - the child's fear of being interrupted by a parent while masturbating? This film isn't interesting enough to spend much time wondering which of these scenes happened. They are clearly there to make this film the potboiler it wants so much to be.

Winter's Bone

This is a grim film. It is set in the Ozark mountains and is populated by backwoods types who wouldn't look out of place in Night Of The Living Dead. I needed subtitles.

It is about Ree (Jennifer Lawrence), a seventeen-year-old who is mother to her young brother, their mother being incompetent. She learns that because of actions of her absent father their house could be confiscated and she tries to find her father, obstructed at every turn by friends and relatives she turns to for help. Finally, assuming he's dead, she tries to find his body. Spoiler coming up. She is finally led to his body, which is suspended under water. They row out to the spot, she gropes over the side of the boat into the water for his wrists, and is passed a chain saw to remove a hand to use as proof that her father is dead. This is the first time it has occurred to me to wonder whether chain saws are available in waterproof models.

I thought this scene was a step or two too far in grimness.

Jennifer Lawrence has been justifiably praised for her part.

It Happened One Night

Here is a Frank Capra film that won five Oscars and is laden with plenty of other American recognition of its quality. It stars Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert and is about an over-night bus journey to New York.

I have read my Janice Radway and this is a ROMANCE! Girl meets boy- girl misunderstands and dislikes boy - friction and resolution occur - girls starts to like boy - they fall in love - *****. On the way we have fun and laughter and outrageous scenes with two stars at their peak.

Forebidden, a film made by Frank Capra in 1932

Frank Capra has never loomed very large in my radar. I was stunned by this film. Stunned by its rawness, stunned by how by how it never went near to falling into the excesses of melodrama, despite having a story that lent itself to that, and amazed at how it never sought to judge its three main characters, when it might easily have done so.

The story spans more than twenty years and shows many lives blighted by unfulfilled love. Lulu, a librarian (Barbara Stanwyck, looking so YOUNG!) meets and falls for a lawyer, Bob (Adolphe Menjou). After some fun he confesses that he's married and there's no question of him leaving his wife, who is crippled by a car accident he is responsible for. After his confession Lulu rejects him and gives birth alone to his daughter. Some years later, when her daughter is about four years old, they get back together. His career progresses to the point of becoming state governor, and she accepts the role of governess to her own child, which he has 'adopted'. She has always been courted by a journalist, Holland (Ralph Bellamy), who doesn't know of her involvement with Bob but, for his own reasons, wants to 'get' the Bob, who has become well known. Bob has become frustrated and sickened by his hypocrisy but is unable to resolve the conflicts in his life. In a moment of despair Lulu agrees to marry Holland but soon after he learns, from his own research into Bob, of her connection with Bob and sees what a fool he has been. In an argument she shoots Bellamy and goes to prison. Out of prison Bob is on his death bed and Lulu is with him when he dies. She wanders off into the street, alone, an unhappy, unfulfilled and hardened person.

This film is so moving in some places I could hardly take it. Background music was not used. The film refused to adjudicate between Lulu and Bob and never sank into sentimentality. This film was of course made before the Hays code prevented films showing birth out of marriage, etc, etc (although the code was adopted in 1930 it was only enforced from 1934 to 1968). I have always been a fan of Barbara Stanwyck, so it doesn't count for much when I say that she was very good. There is an amazing before-Bob's-confession scene when he arrives at her home for supper wearing the mask of a wolf, with also a mask for her, and they cavort and played together wearing masks for five minutes or so, giving the first intimation of the drama to come.