BLACK SWAN 2010

For sheer baroque audacity, few films not directed by Ken Russell can hold a candle (or toe shoe) to Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan. It takes a certain kind of impassioned genius to attempt a psycho-sexual horror fable centered in the mystique-laden world of classical ballet, yet Aronofsky succeeds beyond all reason. By turns disturbing, transgressive, sensual, absurdist, and achingly beautiful, Black Swan is almost swoon-inducing in its willingness to go straight over the top in an effort to alight on something as keen as a pinhead.

Ostensively a grim fairy tale excursion into madness wherein a repressed ballerina's obsessive desire to dance the lead in Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake takes a startlingly anamorphic turn, the real themes of Black Swan are infinitely broader in scope and defy any single, unqualified interpretation.

Natalie Portman as ballerina Nina Sayers

Vincent Cassell (does he have the sexiest nose, or what?) as ballet company manager Thomas Leroy

Mila Kunis as rival ballerina Lily

Barbara Hershey as stage-mother-from-hell Erica Sayers

Winona Ryder as soon-to-be-disposed-of prima ballerina Beth Macintyre

Taken at face value alone, Black Swan is an astonishingly effective psychological thriller blessed with a consistently creepy vibe born of Aronofsky's almost intrusively subjective shooting style. In its ability to (sometimes literally) peel back and expose the layers of compulsion: artistic, sexual, & otherwise, Black Swan is a worthy contemporary companion piece to Roman Polanski's 1965 thriller, Repulsion.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Far and beyond the surface enjoyment I derived from Black Swan's stylishly novel take on the horror/ thriller, was my delight in discovering that the film resonated so deeply with me.

I've been a professional dancer for over a quarter of a century (an eternity in the dance world),  and while I love seeing any kind of dance in film, it's disheartening to contemplate that, by its nature, one's experience of dance in film is limited exclusively to the "display" aspect of the art. The finished product that is the result of the blood, sweat, and tears that is the creative process. In its ability to render visible the sublime and chimerical, dance has the power to make the illusion of perfection seem possible. That is its magic.

The flaw of dance is that, devoid of a glimpse into the human imperfection that creates such an illusion, too many people (most notably young girls lured by the romantic-fantasy, "little princess" fetishism side of classical ballet) find it all too easy to believe that perfection is actually an attainable goal. The striving for perfection in ballet is reflected in the constant dieting (did you check out that "ballerina breakfast" Portman has?) and damaged body image (Portman's character has a history of compulsive scratching) of so many dancers.

Shattered illusion: Broken music box dancer

I've seen many films that showed me what dance looks like, but Black Swan is the first and only film that reflected back to me my own experience of what it "feels" like to dance. How you can't expect to create anything meaningful unless you are brave enough to dig deep within yourself to unearth what lies beneath. Aronofsky has fashioned a film that is a visual representation of that transportive internal maelstrom  (with all its soul-searching, anguish, and conflict) that defines the creative process. A visible answer, if you will, to the question "Where does one have to go internally to create great art?" 

As is frequently the case with people in the performing arts, I am, at my core, a painfully shy person. I was a retiring bookworm who spent his high-school years undesirous of attention and terrified of being called on in class, I chewed my fingernails nervously and rarely looked people in the eye. Yet, in choosing a profession, I was drawn to something as emotionally revealing as dance. In it, I have had to regularly access and reveal parts of my inner self that were antithetical to who I am and how I was raised (VERY Catholic). Though the results occasionally surprise me to this day, no one seeing me dance would ever believe that I wasn't a born exhibitionist, lifelong extrovert, and passionate sensualist.

How is it possible? Take look at Black Swan for the answer.
Though highly-dramatized, the internal transformation necessary to turn a reserved personage like me into that passionate, expressive creature that is a dancer, can feel every bit as terrifying as the events in this film. That's why the events that unfold in Black Swan don't strike me as being intended for literal interpretation. The images and story feel like an operatically allegorical representation of the state of creative transformation and transcendence of self that is necessary to create the illusion of perfection that is dance.

Ballet as fetish: Dance de-romanticized

 PERFORMANCES

Much like the mentally disturbed character of Carol (Catherine Deneuve) in Polanski's Repulsion, Black Swan's Nina (Natalie Portman) is already a little off the barre before the film even begins. With no specifics given as to why she scratches herself or why she lives in a state of adolescent arrested development with her mother, we are left to pick out the clues of her past as the events of the present conspire to send her over the edge. Of course, the kicker is that we see the entire film from Nina's perspective, and, as a troubled young woman going through a paranoid identity crisis, she is the ultimate unreliable narrator. Since she has little grasp of what is real or imagined, neither do we. Welcome to the roller coaster ride.

Natalie Portman gives a truly fearless performance in Black Swan, totally deserving of all the awards heaped on her for her work. I thought she was amazing in Mike Nichols' Closer but she completely blew me away with her intensity here. She takes a very complex character in more-than-fantastic circumstances and makes you believe in (and even care about) what is happening to her.

The ballerina haunted by her obsession with perfection: One of my favorite images from the film

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

I don't know why, but I'm a sucker for movies about identity and duality. Like Shelly Duvall and Sissy Spacek in 3 Women, there is something compelling about separate characters that embody an idealized whole. I love how Black Swan makes literal and stylistic use of reflections, doubles, and the distortions therein.

Mirrors are intriguing objects. They do nothing but reflect that which is before them, but at the same time, they seem to lie. They have the power to reflect back at us the gaze of another (without mirrors we have no idea how we look to someone else) but provocatively, that gaze must first be filtered through our own psyche. If we are self-enchanted, we are happy no matter what we see in the mirror. If we suffer insecurities, mirrors don't contradict us.

“They can romanticize us so, mirrors, and that is their secret: what a subtle torture it would be to destroy all the mirrors in the world: where then could we look for reassurance of our identities?”

Truman Capote  - Other Voices, Other Rooms

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

You can't make a movie about passion without displaying some yourself, and on that score, Black Swan is a seriously sexy success. The obvious physical beauty of Portman and her sensual doppelganger/rival Mila Kunis aside, there is some major heat generated by these women that is refreshing in its removal from the male gaze. Indeed, as the perspective of the film is exclusively that of the repressed Nina, the male gaze is frequently portrayed as repellent or predatory. What erotic underpinnings there are emanate from Nina's awakening to herself and exploring her own sexuality as exemplified by the comfortable carnality of her "Swan" double.

Sensual self-exploration: A dance with Rothbart? 

Although several of my dancer friends didn't care for Black Swan (I suspect because it didn't uphold the romanticized ideal of dance like say, The Turning Point, but almost anybody who knows my tastes in film and attitude toward dance could guess that it would wind up being one of my favorites. It crosses the identity theft themes of Robert Altman's 3 Women with Polanski's penchant for P.O.V. insanity, adds Martin Scorsese's fluid cinematography, and tops it all off with Ken Russell's taste for visual grandiosity.

I admire the film for the chances it takes in refusing to adhere to specific genre constructs and for not falling into the trap of over-explaining everything. I like that in this age of formulaic rom-coms and by-the-numbers action films, Black Swan is a movie that allows itself to be misunderstood. Everyone involved is so obviously invested in what they're doing that it makes it easy to put your trust in the film and allow it to take you wherever it takes you. Seeing it for the first time was a thrill that stayed with me long after. Seeing it several times again...I find the experience gets richer and more layered with each viewing.

"It was perfect."

Copyright © Ken Anderson   2009 - 2011

TRUE GRIT 1969

I have to make two things clear from the start: I am not a fan of westerns and I’m REALLY not a fan of John Wayne. Having firmly established that fact, I’m afraid I must also lay simultaneous claim to the patently contradictory declaration that True Grit — incontestably both a western and a John Wayne film — is one of my all-time favorite movies.

I've loved movies since I was a kid, but even then, there were only two kinds of films I didn't care for: westerns and war movies. Seeing as these genres exemplified virtually the entire John Wayne oeuvre, by the time True Grit appeared at the local movie house on a double bill with The Odd Couple back in 1969 (I was a big fan of Jack Lemmon), I was 12 years old and had yet to ever see a John Wayne movie. Well, as luck would have it, my first John Wayne movie was what I consider (then, and still to this day) his best. True Grit is an engagingly robust and entertaining western adventure that is satisfying in all the ways that a good, old-fashioned, "popcorn movie" should be.

John Wayne as Reuben "Rooster" Cogburn

Kim Darby as Mattie Ross

Glen Campbell as LaBoeuf

The by-now familiar story concerns the efforts of a headstrong girl (the appealingly androgynous Kim Darby, whose haircut here makes her look like a somewhat more masculine Justin Bieber) to bring to justice the murderer of her father. To assist her in her quest she enlists the aid of a boozy, trigger-happy U.S. Marshal named Rooster Cogburn (Wayne) and a chubby-cheeked Texas Ranger named LaBoeuf (the genial singing star Glen Campbell, whose acting style consists of scrunching up his face a lot).

So what was it about True Grit that made it different from the rest of the westerns that flooded the TV and movie screens back in the 1960s?

Well, for starters it has a great "quest" storyline...(something akin to a frontier The Wizard of Oz or prairie Alice in Wonderland) populated with colorful characters, crackling dialog, and centered on a young protagonist with whom a kid could both identify and root for. Its cinematography is fittingly crisp and offers up a storybook vision of the old west— all breathtaking mountain vistas and majestic trees. It has a sweeping Elmer Bernstein "Aaron Copland meets the Marlboro Man" score of rousing, orchestrated music that imbues every scene with the thrust of American myth. And, perhaps best of all, in its subtle integration of emancipated women, Indigenous Americans, African-Americans, and Chinese into the fabric of everyday western life, it is a refreshingly modern take on an over-exhausted genre.

Mattie Ross (toting her father's gun) tries to convince Marshal Cogburn that she means business.

The first time I saw True Grit it played out for me like a thrill-a-minute tall-tale told around a campfire at night. It engaged me from its first frames to its last, doling out equal parts thrills, laughs, and heart. To this day I can watch the film, aware of its artificiality and inauthenticity, yet powerless and unwilling to allow such trivial realities to mar the enjoyment I find in the likable characters, ofttimes hilarious dialog, and terrific performances. Much like 1965s Cat Ballou, True Grit is the perfect western for people who don't like westerns.

Rooster- "By God! She reminds me of me!"

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM
Part of the charm of True Grit is its gentle send-up of the John Wayne myth. Outwardly the story of a young girl's pursuit of justice, running beneath the surface of True Grit is also a story about a man out of step with the times. In the tamed West of True Grit - a West of lawyers, evolving women's roles, and boarding houses that eschew spurs in the dining room, Rooster Cogburn is something of a dinosaur. A symbol of a lawless time that civilized townsfolk would be happy to put behind them. In the America of 1969 John Wayne was also a bit of a dinosaur. His ultra-conservative screen image, pro-war politics, and ofttimes moronic offscreen statements on racial issues alienated him from the very demographic that was emerging as the core movie-going audience of the New Hollywood era — the young, college-age crowd. After the gung-ho embarrassment that was his Vietnam-era war film The Green Berets (a 1968 movie I had the misfortune of watching several decades later), Wayne gets a chance at big-screen redemption in True Grit.

John Wayne's right eye, outacting Glen Campbell

In True Grit John Wayne gives a bravely self-deprecating performance, allowing himself to be called a fat, slovenly, kill-happy, sexist drunk by most of the cast for a good deal of the picture. His machismo is met and bested in nearly every scene by the resourceful Kim Darby, and even Glen Campbell, while not really anybody's idea of a western hero, cuts a more dashing figure of youth and vitality. This subtle peeling away of the anachronistic myth of the Great White Frontiersman has the not-undesired effect of making Wayne into a more sympathetic and appealing character.

Rooster meets his match.

Indeed, Wayne has so much abuse heaped on his head in the film that by the time of the climactic gun battle where he single-handedly takes on four desperadoes while wielding a pistol, a rifle, and holding his horse's reins in his teeth; the audience is practically on its feet cheering, happy to see a moment of old-school Wayne in this sea of late'60s western revisionism.

"No grit? Rooster Cogburn? Not much!"

PERFORMANCES

I've never held with the accepted belief that John Wayne so overpowers the film that the story shifts focus from Darby's Mattie Ross to Wayne's Rooster Cogburn the moment he appears. I'm sure that's what Wayne fans experience, but as good as Wayne is (and he's VERY good. I can't imagine how he made that one eye so expressive!) the under-appreciated and very talented Kim Darby is the main reason I like the film so much.

Her performance is surprisingly strong and she holds the narrative thread together by investing her character's single-minded indomitability with a deep sense of loss and pugnacious vulnerability. Just watch how she matches the energy and skill of veterans like Wayne and Strother Martin in their scenes together. Much like Mattie Ross, Darby refuses to be shunted off to the sidelines by the seasoned, all-male cast, and brilliantly holds her own. Her gutsy yet gentle portrayal also serves to smooth over and humanize all the macho gunplay and violence that often becomes so repetitious and tiresome in westerns.

Lightening failed to strike twice for Darby and Campell who were reteamed a year later in Norwood, a forgotten film also based on a Charles Portis novel and adapted by Marguerite Roberts.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
For a city boy like me, a western couldn't look more like a western than True Grit. A huge departure from the B&W TV westerns of the day, all of which seemed to use the same fake-looking studio backlot town, True Grit's use of spectacular, eye-popping natural locations adds both a visual lushness and a heroic scope.
With traditional western mythology at the core of the narrative, director Henry Hathaway treats the locations as though they are characters in the story. Not only do the mountains and streams provide colorful backdrop, but each scene that plays out in front of one of these magnificent landscapes seems to pay homage to decades of western (movie) tradition. And for those purists who would balk at the Colorado Rockies standing in for the plains of Arkansas and Oklahoma...who really expects to find documentary authenticity in a movie where we're asked to believe four hardened gunmen all manage to miss hitting a sizable target like Rooster Cogburn in a four-against-one faceoff?

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
Movies are a visual medium to be sure, but there's nothing like a well-written story. The source novel by Charles Portis is a great bit of folkloric storytelling brought to vivid life on the screen by Marguerite Roberts. The dialog, the characters, and even the simple structure of the plot are perfection itself. So many films today suffer from over-plotting. Ruled by an audience's short attention span, they trip themselves up with A, B & even C storylines; subplots piled upon subplots, and with all this, they still never make much sense. Here you have a direct narrative with three acts, rising action, character arc, sentimentality, heroism, and probably one of the most satisfyingly-resolved conclusions of a western ever put to film. Great storytelling, great moviemaking.

Consummate character actor Strother Martin is memorable in his scenes as the exasperated auctioneer who has one too many encounters with the headstrong Mattie Ross

You have to look far to find a more menacing western villain than Robert Duvall as "Lucky" Ned Pepper

I have not yet seen the Coen brothers' 2010 remake, but I am very much looking forward to the DVD release. As stated, I think the source novel is foolproof, and any film which claims to hew closely to it is on a winning track from the get-go. I generally tend not to be too fond of remakes, but in this case, I am eager to see these great characters interpreted by a new generation of actors and interpreted perhaps with a new sensibility. The original True Grit will always be special to me and irreplaceable in my memories, but it does come with a lot of baggage (not only the John Wayne issue but the casting of the then-immensely popular Glen Campbell was blatant stunt-casting and an obvious box-office bid). It's been a while now and I think it's high time I see another western...who cares if it's the same one?

"Well, come see a fat old man sometime!"

Copyright © Ken Anderson   2009 - 2011

8 WOMEN (8 FEMMES) 2002

Every now and then, if you're lucky, you come across a film that so nails your particular tastes and fancies that it feels as if someone had snuck into your dreams and extracted a fragment of your psyche. Take George Cukor's The Women, cross it with Agatha Christie, throw in a dash of Les Demoiselles de Rochefort, and you get 8 Women: an intoxicatingly charming cinematic confection aimed directly at the heart of a nostalgia-prone film fan like me.

This Gallic homage to the days of the Hollywood "woman's picture" stars a galaxy of France's greatest actresses in a musical comedy murder mystery that doesn't just tease camp, but envelopes it in a loving embrace.

Danielle Darrieux: Would she kill her husband just because he was too perfect?

Catherine Deneuve: Would she kill her husband just to run off with a lover?

Isabelle Huppert: Would she kill a man just because he resisted her advances?

Fanny Ardant: Would she kill a man just for money?

Emmanuelle Beart: Would she kill her employer?

Virginie Ledoyen: Would she kill the man who betrayed her?

Ludivine Sagnier: Would she kill to protect someone?

Fermine Richard: Would she kill to hide a secret?

It's Christmastime in the 1950s and eight wildly divergent women, each with a conventionally dark secret, are trapped by a blizzard in an isolated chateau in the French countryside. The sole male resident of the household has been discovered with a knife sticking out of his back and it is up to the women to discover, through bouts of hysteria, temperament, deceptions, and revelations, the identity of the culprit. That this house should harbor more secrets than a game of "Clue" is no surprise. That the film (directed by Francois Ozon and adapted from a play by Robert Thomas) so playfully and effectively balances the at-odds genres of musical, melodrama, and mystery...well, that's a marvel.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM
I am just crazy about the way this film looks. The phrase "eye candy" was invented for movies like this. Sporting art direction seemingly inspired by an exploded petit four factory and a color palette taken from a drag queen's makeup case, 8 Women is one sumptuous viewing experience. The rich, hyper-vibrancy of the cinematography intentionally harkens back to the 50s Technicolor melodramas of Ross Hunter and Douglas Sirk, while the tailored, color-specific costuming recalls the glory days of Edith Head and the Hollywood studio system. A system that demanded that stars look like stars no matter the requirements of the script. 

Deneuve & Beart face off...and look fabulous doing so!

And speaking of stars...WOW! You can seriously overdose on glamour and all-around gorgeousness here. I mean, the sight of Catherine Deneuve and Fanny Ardant on screen at the same time is enough to make a person's eyes fall right out of their head. Ranging in ages from 21 (Sagnier) to 84 (Darrieux), it's striking to see that the smooth, unlined prettiness of the younger stars can't hold a candle to the kind of sensual beauty that age and experience add to a woman's face.

Ardant & Deneuve in the cat-fight of the century!

PERFORMANCES
It shouldn't be the cinema anomaly that it is, but one of the more satisfying things about 8 Women is that after taking the trouble to assemble a first-class cast of iconic French actresses, Ozon actually shows off each to her best advantage and allows them to play to their strengths. Consequently, the entire cast is consistently firing on all cylinders and the film fairly crackles with electricity and star quality in each scene. (My head still aches from the lost, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of 70s icons Robert DeNiro, Barbra Streisand, and Dustin Hoffman teamed for...Meet the Fockers???? Heaven wept!)

 Anyhow, all the actresses in 8 Women are a joy. Super serious Isabelle Huppert proves to be a wonderfully wacky comedienne; Fanny Ardant, heat personified, is intelligent and earthy; Deneuve wittily sends up her own icy screen image; and French legend Danielle Darrieux has a marvelous way with a reaction shot. You really have to watch the film at least twice: once for the subtitles and plot, a second time just to watch the faces. Possibly even a third time, just to pick up all the inside film references (like Emmanuelle Beart's maid costume - down to the kinky, lace-up boots - paying homage to Jeanne Moreau in Bunuel's Diary of a Chambermaid, or Ledoyen's Audrey Hepburn bangs).

Spinster aunt Augustine's response to being asked why she was up at 3am cleaning her comb!

The previously wheelchair-bound, sympathy-milking grandmama suddenly reveals she can walk.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
More difficult than catching lightning in a bottle (and twice as foolhardy) is to attempt to create intentional camp. Camp is a cultural phenomenon easily identified but notoriously resistant to commodification. At its worst, it's like a comic who ruins the punchline by cracking up at his own joke. At its best, it feels like something that comes from a place of gentle affection and nostalgia. The stylistic excesses of 8 Women are so funny because it's so clear that the director is so fond of them.

Each of the actresses is given her own musical number. Here the exquisite Fanny Ardant channels Rita Hayworth

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
Old-style Hollywood films were peerless at using the hyper-reality of the cinema to emphasize real-life issues. All manner of otherwise objectionable material was made digestible if the leading lady was suffering in mink and her surroundings were plush.

8 Women is not out to make any big social statements, but there are a great many smart, feminist underpinnings behind the ingeniousness of taking the structurally rigid genre of the murder mystery and having that serve as the environment in which repressive gender roles of the 1950s are stylistically juxtaposed with the artifice of old-fashioned Hollywood. A perfect melding of style and content.

The late, great Romy Schneider makes a surprise appearance as the 9th woman.

In this age of remake mania, it's impossible to watch 8 Women and not fantasize about who might be cast in an American remake. My mind goes to the actresses I grew up with: Jane Fonda, Faye Dunaway, Jacqueline Bisset, and Julie Christie. Unfortunately, I suspect that the brain-numbing awfulness that was the 2008 remake of The Women (the film Ozon initially wanted to do) may have forever killed any interest in an American version of this utterly beguiling, utterly original film.

On the plus side, my enjoyment of 8 Women at least sparked an interest in seeing these great actresses in other films. A decision that introduced me to a 35-year-old Danielle Darrieux in Max Ophul's masterful The Earrings of Madame de...,  and Catherine Deneuve in Truffaut's sentimental The Last Metro, among others. Seeing all of these actresses in the many different roles they've played over the years only makes me appreciate more the depth and breadth of talent they bring to 8 Women, and grateful for how this film pays such loving tribute to them.

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2011