Memories of Black Swan
This post isn’t a review as much as it is a way to talk about emotion and memories that are bound up with a film.
Back in 2010, I was obsessed in my own little way with Darren Aronofsky’s films. I saw Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain and The Wrestler in that order. I checked out π at some point, but it was certainly after I had seen Requiem more than once.
I thought Requiem and The Fountain were both masterpieces in their own right. I could tell π had the same genius behind it, but I couldn’t get into it in part because it was weird and unrelatable and in part because I could see the genius working but not quite polished.
Despite being a fan of Aronofsky’s, I didn’t know he was working on Black Swan. I can’t remember if I bothered watching the trailer or not when I found out, but I think I had some idea of what the film was about prior to going to see it. I think I only knew about the film days, maybe a few weeks before it came out.
According to IMDb, Black Swan was release in December of 2010. I know I saw the film for the first time in either late December of 2010 or early January 2011. And I want to tell you a story about that, but before I do, I have to tell you another story to set the stage for a remark I want to convey that a friend made about that film.
Back in October…
According to my Live Journal, the first incident with my flip phone happened in October of 2010. You see, I had a flip phone and a plastic holder that clipped onto my belt. There was a pseudo-button at the top of the holder underneath which there was a bit of plastic that would grip and hold the phone. The “button” could be “pressed” to relate the phone; to put the phone in the holder, one lined the phone up and pushed the phone into the holder.
I was putting on weight getting fatter in those heady days of my first computer programming job. Inevitably, the blubber of the side of my muffin top broke the holder. In fact, I think the one referenced in my Live Journal may have been the second holder. Again, memory fades.
For those of you who didn’t click the link, the story is that I lost my phone on a walk around the office building and someone in the office park found my phone, found the v-card and was kind enough to send me an email telling me he had my phone.
In December
I can’t quite remember the day of the events I’m about to tell you happened, but I think it was the 30th of December.
I had a friend–we’ll call him Dan–who I first met as a colleague working a food delivery job. The food delivery job was a second job for him and eventually it became his primary job when he was laid off/fired from his primary job.
I can’t recall if his wife worked at the time or not. What I do remember is that we became good friends outside of work: we had similar political views and, he introduced me to Top Gear.
His wife’s family was from the other side of the country. I don’t remember exactly what happened with him and the food delivery job, but I do remember he tried a different line of work that wound up not working out. Eventually he had to sell his house. But before or during that was the Christmas holidays and his wife’s family gracefully paid for him to fly out to be with his family for Christmas.
So, I think he was coming back into town on the 30th because I don’t think it was New Year’s Eve, else my first viewing of Black Swan was in January.
You see, Dan was flying into town at 11:30 pm the night I went to see Black Swan. I seem to remember going to a/the 6:00 pm showing, but again, the memory is lost to history. It’s possible I saw a later show and the timing was tighter, but the mem…
I think it was when I getting out of the car once I got to the theater that I realized my phone was missing…again.
So this was the second or more likely the third phone holder I had been through. I remember thinking there was no point fretting about not having my phone, but that also meant that Dan couldn’t call me when he landed.
Problem Solving
Regardless of when I realized I no longer had a phone, once I appraised the situation, I came up with a plan.
I had a second friend, “Mark”, who was a technical guy. Although he was not and is not a programmer, he grew up as the PC grew up and built many machines. He was a hardware guy, though not a computer engineer (or CPE as we called the computer hardware design guys in college).
Through some form of instant messenger or voice chat app–I’m thinking it was likely Google Talk–I was able to tell Mark what happened and have him contact Dan. I think Dan knew before his flight took off what happened, but again, the memory is…
It seems like Dan’s plane somehow got in an hour early, but I did pick him up from the airport.
Stag Night
I remember gushing about the film to Dan.
Now, it’s important to know that Dan practiced a certain denomination of Christian faith which I won’t mention here. I don’t know if R-rated movies were strictly prohibited by his religion, but I think they were frowned on. I’ve never been persuasive, merely manipulative; so, the way I remember it, I wore down Dan’s opposition and persuaded him to come with me within a few days–if not the next day–to see the film.
A Proper Review
So for those who don’t know, Black Swan is the story of a ballet dancer who has been dancing for several years but hasn’t yet had her big break. When we meet her at the beginning of the film, she’s seemingly innocent and pure, though she admits to not being a virgin later in the film.
The film is set in New York City.
The ballet company she dances for is going to open their new season with Swan Lake. According to the film, the story of Swan Lake is that a girl meets a boy and falls in love but her evil twin sister beguiles and seduces this boy causing the protagonist to commit suicide.
In the story in Black Swan the film, the dance, Nina (Natalie Portman), is chosen to play both sisters in the upcoming production of Swan Lake. The problem is that the director doesn’t think she can play the black swan because she is too pure, too perfect.
In order to get her to loosen up and find a way into the role of the black swan, the director tells her to go home and “touch yourself”, e.g. masturbate.
Meanwhile, a new, sexy girl from California, Lilly (Mila Kunis), is added to the troop.
It turns out that Nina’s mother was also a ballet dancer. Nina’s mom got pregnant with Nina and gave up her career to raise Nina, though Nina’s father is nowhere in the picture–both figuratively and literally not in the film Black Swan.
In order to get away from her overbearing mother, Nina decides to have drinks with Lilly which in turn leads to drug use which in turns leads to (as Jeremy Clarkson would put it) “lesbi-onics” between Nina and Lilly.
Black Swan is set up as a pressure cooker with two releases: a release when Nina is publicly announced as playing the role of the white and black swans and again at the end of the film.
Dan’s Comment
Dan told me that when he was sowing his wild oats, he had a threesome with two other girls. He said his wife had asked him about that on occasion. He said that when things got hot and heavy, the girls didn’t really bother with him but instead got hot and bothered by each other. His other comment on the situation was that he’s never seen a woman/women as intensely sexual than when they are sexually engaging with other women.
And Dan told me this because of how sexual the lesbionics were in the film.
The Emotion of Films
I’ve always preferred dramas to other genres of films. To my mind, thrillers are a subset of drama is that you get wrapped up in the story. The more realistic the drama, the better, allowing, of course, for things like movie physics.
As a general rule, I don’t like fantasy or sci-fi films. But I have allowed for films that stretch metaphors in a “fantastic” way e.g. Nina sprouting swan feathers in Black Swan.
I also want a film to move me emotionally.
There are a handful of emotionally heavy films that I recall.
Wit was a major emotional film for me. I remember crying so hard the first time I watched the film that I was afraid that my sobbing was going to cause the DVD to skip because I was watching the film on a laptop sitting on my lap while I was on my futon.
Even though I haven’t seen it in ages, I have a strong emotional memory of Freedomland and once used it to treat a depressive funk I was in.
I nearly cried when I watched Meet Joe Black for the first time when I was in college, and, when I took the film home and showed it to my family, my sister bawled for twenty minutes at the film’s conclusion.
When I saw Crash in the theater for the first time (I saw it several times in the theater), I both wanted to throw something at the screen and also get chocked up.
Saving Mr. Banks deserves an honorable mention, but I’ve only seen it once.
When I saw Aronosky’s The Fountain for the first time in theaters, it was with a group of us young guys from church. I can’t remember if I got chocked up on that viewing or not, but I do remember most of the guys were disappointed because I think they thought they were going to see some kind of action movie or at least one with sword fights in it.
Tonight’s Viewing of Black Swan
I try not to watch Black Swan too often so I can still feel the emotions when I watch the film. Tonight, however, I was distracted during the first section of the film prior to the tension break of Nina’s introduction announcement because I was looking up the film on IMDb and re-reading the trivia.
So I missed the first mounting tension.
Also, my perspective has evolved quite a bit since 2010: in 2010, I was still very tightly wound and the scenes with Nina and her mother at the beginning of the film had a tremendous impact on me. I could relate to Nina’s repression because I was similarly repressed growing up and was just then starting to come out of my shell.
But that was then and this is now and I’ve had a lot more sex since then.
I finally settled on watching Black Swan tonight because I’ve been deeply depressed all day given my long(ish)-term lack of employment and subsequent financial problems. The film did the trick, though I wasn’t as deeply involved emotionally this time around as I have been in the past. Nevertheless, I did get a bit emotional as the tension came to a boil in the second pressure cooker of the film.
I wonder why, though.
Is it the facial expressions? The music? Or is it a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts?
Whatever the case, Black Swan is one fine piece of filmmaking.
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