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Black Swan or:-Natalie Portman this movie.

Friends, readers, hipsters: I came to bury this movie, not to praise it.  Black Swan , the latest movie of Darren Aronofsky (Reqiuem for a Dream, The Fountain, The Wrestler) has received an amount of press-attention and hype within my peers only rivalled by The Social Network  or back in the days 300 .

While myself being a big fan of Natalie Portman, I don't really relate to Darren Aronofsky. I have seen The Fountain  and slept like a baby during The Wrestler , but to my own shame I still lack the experience of Requiem for a Dream . Darren Aronofsky Fans might want to leave this review right here and feed a stray cat or throw cherry blossoms into the midwinter sky. Anyway, I went in completely hyped and a bit aware of the whole plot, so I was shaken between expectations of grandeur and my own experiences of movies of that kind: difficult.


Plot in short: Nina, around her early twenties, played by the stunning Natalie Portman, is an aspiring young dancer at the Ballet of New York. With the dismissal of their last stardancer, she gets the rather unique chance to play the swan queen in Tchaikovsky's play under the director Mr Leroy, played by Vincent Cassel, who didn't have to put much effort into his part. Her mother, enacted by Barbara Hershey, once herself a dancer in a ballet, strongly encourages, rather forces Nina to achieve a carreer in ballet and consequently, Nina turns nuts under all the pressure of succeeding, the rivalry between her and her colleagues, the high expectations of the director Thomas Leroy (who is french, now let's be honest, it's basically LeRoi or Leroi, not Leroy, he even curses in french, come on Darren, this is american cliché.) and the boundaries of her own small horizon of experiences between her room and the ballet studio.

Now that jezebel crown is as fitting and astonishing as the rest of Natalie Portman's role.

So, this is not a dancing movie! It's said to be a thriller, yet it is very obvious how the whole thing ends all the time. There are some slightly shocking events that construct around the whole doubleganger-part and easily derive from a splitted mind, but it's not exactly terrifying. So, which genre exactly applies? If it can't be derived from the above-mentioned attributes, there only is one possibility left: a tragedy, wrapped in a dramatic play. A very classical one, consisting of several acts (foreword, preparation, compromise, adaptation and relief of Nina) and a main protagonist that is able to live through a catharsis  as she does possess the ability to fall.

Natalie Portman does in fact play a great Nina, yet the other characters are not really a big challenge for well-known stars like Vincent Cassel or Wynona Rider. What I'm criticizing is: no surprises . Wynona Rider is the destroyed role-model, the famous ex-dancer that stands in front of a shattered carreer and a shattered body - a dark fate that lures above Nina. While I was hoping, that LeRoy might bare the one or other surprise or deepness, eventually he ends to be a normal trainer with all the (sexual) connotations and clichés.

According to Aristotle , the viewer of a tragedy receives a catharsis by witnessing the peripeteia of the protagonist. Left with a dropped jaw in respect of the great work of Natalie Portman, I feel still unsatisfied: While a great meal might be made of the finest ingredients, it's all in the composition. Combining lobsters with truffles in one table leaves me confused and not nourished: I'm still not seeing the sense and point of the Black Swan . What benefits, while not amusement or soulfood, could you profit of?

How To Make A Driver's License Bday Invitation

Chitchat.

Enough with it?

A short play.

Characters:

B: Benedikt as himself.
M: His Mother as herself.

Short plot: so dark the con of man.

< The telephone rings. While being a person not really leaning towards privacy, only a few, not exactly selected persons, are aware of Benedikt's number at home. He does not try to hide it, though. The few calls that he receives from time to time usually come from two or three people. One of them is his beloved mom - and in the most uncertain case of him running low on blood pressure, but one call of her might get him back on normal or even higher level within no time .>



M: "Hey son, how are you doing?"
B: "Well, see, I caught a cold and won't be able to make it to your birthday dinner tonight. I mean, I could easily participate, yet I don't want to infect any of you. Though your husband told me earlier that he recovered only recently, I would expect him to manage dinner with me, but I'm afraid I can't really imagine how it feels with 67. Cough."
M: "Well, I understand, than, let's make another appointment. When do you think you will be fit again?"
B: "Can't really state that. I expect the usual three days of dizziness and isolation, so I could think of the weekend."
M: "So, we chose sunday then?"

< At this point, Benedikt usually tends to lower the brain's processes: having stated the necessary things, he prefers to relax. First things first, Benedikt likes to make spontaneous, new appointments that fit just right when the time has come. An attribute that he doesn't quite share with his mother... >

B: "Hm?"
M: "Sunday, lunch?"
B: "Hm, oh, yes, why not, sunday, sure."
M: "Well we could do Thursday, too, but I don't know how you're doing on Thursday."
B: "Me neither, and I am quite alright with Sunday, yeah, Sunday is ok."
M: "I mean, I have my free day tomorrow, so I could visit you on Wednesday?"
B: "Seeing funny unicorns and multicolored jellyfish right now, I don't expect me to be available next morning - so I'm fine with Sunday, that suits just great."
M: "Good, sunday it is - oh, but if you're not back on track on sunday yet, we could also take the next Tuesday?"
B: "Errr....what? Why? How shall I know, if I recovered on Sunday, right now, I can't even think of today's evening..."
M: "Oh I was just saying, maybe the 25th instead of the 23rd, safety first, you know?"

< At this time, Benedikt is frantically struggling with himself whether to shout or cry. His cerebrum banging in his head like a party at the Playboy Mansion, he suffers severe problems of staying focussed. His short-term-memory is in the state of the infrastructure of Haiti, so he looks up the calendar and immediately asks himself: why? >

M: "Simply because, if Tuesday was ok today, why not Tuesday in a week?"
B: "Oh I see, 25th...uhm, but, oh my, Sunday is good. Let's stick to Sunday. I'll write it down."
M: "Okay, so sunday the 23rd. I don't know yet what we'll do on Saturday, if you rather prefere that one?"
B: "No, why? We said Sunday, Sunday is as good as it gets. Can we please, I..."
M: "Was just saying, if you're sure of Sunday, we'll stick to Sunday."
B: "Yes, yes. Right. Sunday. Good. Sunday it shall be."
M: "Ok, I will write it down in my calendar. Besides that, you're doing alright?"

< Right now, Benedikt was not thinking of torture and pain but of writing this very blogpost, this time in English as he is currently participating in an "Effective Writing" course. So why not hand in some stuff that he wrote for this blog? Because, right now, the teacher wants him to write a review on a movie...oh, look, unicorns again!"


B: "Hmm? Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. Gonna do some homework, shop some food, you know, usual stuff. Would like to make a carrot-ginger soup, read that at a friend who his also ill...sooo....yeah."

< Writing these lines, Benedikt can't really manage to sit straight anymore. He already consumed around four litres of tea and a hot citron. After all, it's not the first time that Benedikt is having a cold! >

M: "Remember to drink a lot of tea or water, the body needs cleansing!"
B: "No mom, I want to starve and cleanse my body the way those medieval childs do: Despite lepper and Cholera, they have a lot of flies around their eyes, but there's one thing they don't have: a cold. So I'll stick to that."
M: "Sometimes, you're disgusting."
B: "I know, Mom. I'm alright. Sunday. < breathes. > Take care, say Hi to Grandom."
M: "Oh I just returned from her, she's a bit confused today."
B: "Ha, not only her...well, she'll call later anyway. Tell her."
M: "Yes, right, haha, she'll do. You know, you could phone her yourself?"

< Benedikt wants to reply shouting loudly: "I would rather like to stand naked on top of a ship in stormy sea and perform the Erlkönig , but I can't figure out, in which way to shout so nobody would hear it because of all the wind!" Of course, he says: >

B: "Yep, sure, will do."

< Meanwhile, the conversation ended and both contestants in this epic battle of useless arguments are bandaging their wounds. While he writes these very lines, Benedikt wonders whether he might bore his most-honored readership with it. He is not sure, whether the text is fun to read, whether it gives the idea of him being a mummy's boy and last but not least: he is in desperate need of a punchline!>

B: "Cough, snort, phew."


< The telephone rings again. >


B: "MOM, WHAT'S UP??!"
M: "Hahaha, oh there just was a lettre of the Deutsche Bahn on behalf of your Bahncard, it says something of a PIN you need to insert online and..."
B: "Ah, haha. Yes. Thank you."
M: "So I was just thinking, if by any chance you're feeling top-notch tomorrow, you might just wanna call....?"


..........................................................


Nota bene:


This all might appear to be quite teasing and cynically - yet it isn't. Despite the beforementioned conversation, of course I do love my mom as one could. I wouldn't dare to criticize her in that way, because she might just feel like she was aging. Of course, she isn't. Some people can make appointments, others don't. Also, I tend to be very confusing sometimes and speak very fast. So while I usually exchange few times more than 4 or 6 words with my father on the phone, my mom apparently simply has to compensate.