Not too old to die young

Rating: Null/10 (4 March 2013)

Satoshi Kon directed "Perfect Blue" in 1998. That film centred on a character called Mima, a young pop-star who leaves her clean-cut pop band in the hopes of beginning a career as an actress. But as Mima is forced into racier material, the film's narrative begins to break down, points-of-views, dreams, nightmares and private delusions overlapping and co-mingling. Eventually it becomes clear that Mima's breakdown is the result of, or induced by, a deeply disturbing culture. She's a victim of a world which pits sister against sister, which demands conformity, perfection, submission, is deeply sexist, bows to the tyranny of the image and is obsessed with both celebrity and a form of feminine perfection which tends toward neuroses, mental instability and finally collapse.
Darren Aronofsky bought the rights to "Perfect Blue" over a decade ago, an act which essentially allows him to rip it off with "Black Swan". His film borrows "Blue's" plot, themes, shots, but switches acting for ballet and changes Mima's name to Nina. And so Nina, played by Natalie Portman, is a young ballet dancer. She takes on the task of portraying both the white swan and black swan roles in an upcoming production of Swan Lake. Unfortunately Nina's director, sleazily played by Vincent Cassel, doesn't believe Nina to be capable of portraying both roles. Nina's a fine white swan, he says, but isn't sexy, dark and brooding enough to be a black swan as well. "You need to touch yourself and live a little," Cassel says. Nina takes it upon herself to prove this man wrong. She too can be a slut, and so soar!
Both "Perfect Blue" and "Black Swan" then deal with a very specific identity split; the woman's pressure to be both virgin and whore, good girl and bad, and so a success. But as their original self images are undermined and deemed not sufficient, both girls become increasingly unstable, living up to expectations and personality images which must be painfully forged and constantly maintained. They must "break themselves down" in order to be "rebuilt" for an Other's gaze. In "Perfect" you're always aware of how this gaze is socially forged (fans, cameras, sexist and patriarchal pressures, money etc), whilst in "Swan", other women, and Nina herself, largely become the "problem"; the source of mental illness.
Nina begins to change. Once frigid, a virgin, and a thoroughly good girl, Nina eventually succeeds in becoming a total slut, raving in dance clubs, having lesbian sex, fantasising about murder (she symbolically kills a rival/double and thus becomes TOTALLY BAD) and raging against everyone. She's the new ideal, both good girl and bad, a fact which angers ageing ballerina Beth (Winona Ryder), who is forced to confront the impossibility of maintaining the "necessary" level of perfection. In "Perfect Blue", Ryder's character is called Rumi, both women once successful in their younger days but now pushed aside to make way for younger models. In both films older women hate their younger replacements, but "Perfect" looks for root causes and ends with sympathy for its elder woman, whilst "Swan's" elderly women remain distant and/or villainous. Indeed, even Nina's mother, an ex ballerina who obsessively pushes her daughter, is treated as yet another monstrous woman by Aronofsky, rather than victim.
Aronofsky and Satoshi's differing preoccupations thus lead to vastly different climaxes. In "Perfect", Mima recognises the causes of her breakdown, rebels and asserts her own identity. She will henceforth be what she wants to be. In "Swan", Nina literally self-destructs on a ballet stage. The implication is that Nina suicidally gives her body wholly over to both the stage and the gaze; she is entirely yours, entirely possessed, a submission which echoes that of Ram the Wrestler in Aronofsky's last picture. Both deal with the giving of flesh over to the idea of celebrity, worth and fame, of giving one's flesh entirely over to art, until healthy passions give way to a very neurotic need to affirm one's worth to a culture which deems them worthless. But unlike "Perfect", "Swan's" more misogynistic than about misogyny. It's about "perfection" in a much more general sense. But seeking perfection and mastery in, say, the arts or sciences, is a perfectly noble or even healthy goal. Seeking perfection due to socially constructed feminine ideals is something else altogether. Aronofsky's film deals with the former, and so ends with a kind of lie.
Bizarrely, "Swan" doesn't recognise its aesthetic as being totally camp. The film is totally clichéd, totally goofy, filled with silly dialogue, obvious symbolism, material that has long been the subject of parody and plays like an Italian giallo movie, yet Aronofsky takes everything ULTRA SERIOUSLY. Indeed, much of "Swan" is comprised of chunks of better movies. You have bits of early DePalma, early Polanski (especially "Repulsion"), "Showgirls", "The Red Shoes", "Black Narcissus", and of course "All about Eve". Nina's tale is also a less sophisticated, less touching version of Betty's tale in "Mulholland Drive" (also with doubles, identity blurring and mental breakdowns). "Swan" also borrows a number of well worn ballet clichés, like the "ballerina who dies in the end" cliché ("Waterloo Bridge", "Red Shoes", "Red Danube", "Spectre of the Rose", "Story of Three Lovers"), the "female vamptress cliché", the "one dancer embodies the dark flip-side of the other cliché", the "psychosomatic disorder cliché" ("Limelight", "Grand Hotel") and the "female rivalry cliché", seen in dance films like "Wishing Star", "Showgirls", "Dance, Girl, Dance", "The Unfinished Dance", "Suspria", and the classic "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" Aronofsky, though, acts like these films don't exist.
6/10 – See Altman's "The Company".