Too good to watch

Rating: 10/10 (4 January 2011)

This is possibly the best movie I have seen for a long, long time. It was next to flawless. I hated it. The direction is incredible, with camera angles, scene usage and lighting being used to their utmost. Portman's acting is the most Oscar worthy I think I have ever seen. I will never look at her the same again. So, why did I hate it? Because it was too good at what it intended to do - to show you the mind of a deeply psychologically disturbed person. The combination of acting and direction made me feel as if I was undergoing all of her fears, rather than just watching them on the screen. At the beginning you want to protect Portman, and feel terrible at the isolated world of bitchiness and exploitation that she is in - a world too intense and demanding for someone as delicate as her. This is perhaps the brilliance of casting Portman for this role. She is naturally a very delicate person, whose beauty owes to the innocence of her looks. This is an innocence which, as a man raised to be a gentleman, I feel obliged to protect. But in pretty much every single scene in the entire movie, her innocence is being tested, exploited, broken down and abused. By the end you are terrified of her and what she has become. There is not one single moment in the movie that did not have me wincing and tensing, and once the movie was finished it took a long time for me to relax. Had the acting and directing been less than brilliant I think I could have shrugged it off a bit more easily. If you are in any way sensitive towards the subject of female suffering in film, then under no circumstances watch this movie. If you are harder and less sensitive towards other, then under no circumstances miss it.