One of the advantages—or drawbacks—of being a longtime movie critic is the ability to recognize bits and pieces ( and sometimes whole chunks ) of other movies in the film that you are watching and attempting to critique. While there are many comforting aspects to this instant familiarity with zillions of movies—there's also the obvious downside. When faced with a picture like the recent Burlesque, for example, the cobbling together of just about all its aspects from other movies—from characters to clothes—is so blatant as to be laughable.
This movie déjà vu was again particularly potent during a screening of Black Swan, the new movie from writer-director Darren Aronofsky. The backstage plot in itself—ballerina Nina ( Natalie Portman ) finally gets her big chance only to find Lily ( Mila Kunis ) , an all-too-eager understudy, waiting in the wings—is a variation on many other movies, including All About Eve, Stage Door, Showgirls, Single White Female, Valley of the Dolls, etc. ( It's a long list that leads right back to Burlesque. ) The ballet stuff, of course, calls to mind The Red Shoes, The Company, The Turning Point, Center Stage, etc. while the toxic relationship between Nina and her mother Erica ( Barbara Hershey ) has elements of Mommie Dearest, Carrie, Postcards from the Edge, etc.
Add to this Aronofsky's own acknowledged influences—he has cited Polanski's Repulsion, Rosemary's Baby and especially his paranoid fantasy, The Tenant, as particular inspirations—and you have a film so overloaded with ghosts from other films that it's surprising just how completely Aronofsky has taken all these reference points and used them to create something uniquely his own. It's a thrilling, daredevil movie that straps you into the damaged psyche of its central character and doesn't release you until long after the credits roll.
In winning the triumphant starring, dual roles in the company's production of "Swan Lake," the company's autocratic, dismissive, womanizing director, Thomas ( Vincent Cassel ) , has made it clear that Nina must do the one thing that seems alien to her—she must "get loose," that is, tap into her dormant sexuality in order to bring off the white swan's salacious doppelganger, the black swan. Nina tries to loosen up but isn't getting it so Thomas assigns the free-spirited Lily ( Kunis ) as her understudy, which kicks Nina's obsession into high gear. The two spend a night on the town that ends with the two in a sensual clinch that merely fuels more mistrust ( and it's not clear whether their tryst has been the product of Nina's imagination or is a real assignation ) . As the movie moves into its last act, with the paranoia ratcheted up, Aronofsky's suffocating camera—which has stayed close to Nina and never gives her ( or us ) a break—comes in even closer, swirling about and leering at Nina.
Nina has been slipping into madness pretty much from the get-go and has all the earmarks of a paranoid schizophrenic we recognize, again, from other movies. ( Nina's as psychologically damaged, as neurotically narcissistic as Julie Harris in The Haunting. ) And, as in Hitchock's Vertigo, the duality of light and dark—another theme of the picture—is picked up by the color scheme, sets and costumes. Fluffy pink is used constantly as an ironic contrast as there's nothing remotely romantic or girlish or soft about this exacting world; the stereotype of the color as feminine and comforting is at odds with Nina's maniacal vision of the world.
Portman trained five hours a day for a year, working with the film's choreographer, Benjamin Millepied, to be convincing in the role and her sinewy dancing is, indeed, impressive. But it's the tour de force acting that's truly breathtaking. Portman's Nina is a girl-woman who allows herself not a moment of joy, real happiness or genuine pleasure. She's so tightly controlled and fixated she appears about to snap at any moment ( with her brittle physicality calling to mind victims of anorexia, with a persistent rash on her back that her mother insists is self-inflicted ) while Portman's stunning, bewitching beauty is used here as both a punishment and a curse. The actress' commitment to the role is a high-flying act akin to the intensity Faye Dunaway brought to Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest, but this is a part you can't laugh at for a second. Unlike tough Crawford, Nina is the ultimate victim, a cipher used by all the other characters for their own purposes.
Aronofsky's The Wrestler was as emotionally sodden ( and satisfying ) as an old Susan Hayward vehicle; The Fountain an interesting failure and nothing more. One has to go back to Requiem for a Dream to get at his real talent, which seems to be fixing his camera on characters that are slowly but inexorably falling apart in front of us. In Black Swan, he has created a gorgeous variation on this merciless theme. Like an unblinking God on high, Aronofsky surrounds his emotionally fragile leading lady with a gallery of awful characters ( Lily is a questionable exception ) —only taking pity on his pitiable creation at the last moment. When he finally shows Nina an inch of compassion it's a heartbreaking, unforgettable conclusion that masterfully sums up this punishing, fascinating and extraordinarily beautiful film.
Picture 55,000 men and 187 women. That's how skewed the numbers were at the gigantic Ford factory in the industrial down of Dagenham, England, in 1968, when those 187 women decided to go on strike for equal pay and better working conditions. That's the subject of Made in Dagenham, a British cross between Norma Rae and North Country starring Sally Hawkins, an Oscar nominee for Happy Go Lucky, as the plucky leader of the ladies. Said ladies are sewing machinists for Ford, who buck management, their husbands and lots of pervasive male chauvinism in their quest for parity.
There's never much doubt that the ladies will at long last get at least some of their demands met and, oddly, it seems to be a very happy strike ( often pictured in montages set to perky '60s tunes ) . The strike also doesn't seem to have much impact on the lives of the ladies, although we're constantly being told that marriages are breaking up, relationships are stretched, and holdouts are everywhere. But a winning cast of British actors ( who include Miranda Richardson as the country's first female secretary of state, dealing with discrimination herself ) and the '60s British mod milieu help put this one in the plus column.
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