Black Swan: Dancing, Death, and Doppelgängers

Plot:
A tortured New York ballerina explores her dark side as she competes to win the coveted lead role as the Black Swan.


When the final sequence in Black Swan is over and the credits role, you get the sense that you have seen something very special. There is no way you could watch this film and not have some sort of discussion on the journey home. Darren Aronofsky hasn't just directed a film here, he has created a piece of art that will live on for some years to come.

Describing Black Swan to someone who hasn't seen it can be a challenge as a film about Ballet isn't something that appeals to many, especially when such films as True Grit and 127 Hours seem more engaging to a mainstream audience. However once you get over the fact that the film is about something unfamiliar, you are taken on a ride that literally drags you by the heels. The film contains themes have been lodged into Aronofsky's work in the past, the alienation of ourselves and the searching of identity from Requiem for a dream is ever-present, along with the protagonist journey we saw in The Wrestler. 

As a huge fan of David Lynch, I knew from the beginning I would love Black Swan. It switches moods in a flash from the melancholic opening which transcends into dark, monumental chaos. Natalie Portman carries the film and delivers a performance worthy of her Oscar nomination, playing Nina Sayers, the wannabe star. Her love-hate relationship with Ballet, her friend Lily and teacher Thomas Leroy makes us unable to take our eyes away from the screen. Vincent Cassel is completely over the top with his performance as Leroy but this is what makes the film so different. He is a character so out of the ordinary that it becomes the norm and pushes us deeper into the beautiful yet destructive world of Ballet.

The plot isn't something completely mind-blowing and the ending is totally expected. However, the film is as much about the set-pieces and the journey that Nina Sayers goes through. The cinematography in the film is amazing and the Ballet scenes look completely realistic (to someone who knows nothing about it anyway). Barbara Hershey is scintillating as the mother of Nina and their on-screen relationship goes from adoration to hatred and everything in-between, creating a turbulent and unpredictable environment in which the audience is as trapped as the two of them.

Black Swan takes the audience through so many different emotions that it is difficult to pinpoint how someone might feel afterwards. Whatever you think of the film, you wont have seen anything like it.

5/5 

Revanche

Revanche is a film about escaping. Alex and Tamara want to escape from their destructive lives in Vienna where Alex works as a pimp in a brothel and Tamara works as a prostitute at the same place. The whole film has that European, uncomfortable feel about the cinematography and each shot is delicately filmed giving it a soft, yet voyeuristic touch. In order to get away from the filthy and shoddy place they both inhabit, they need money, so Alex decides to rob a bank. Here enters Robert who is a policeman. After Alex and Tamara try to escape when they have the money, Robert shoots to stop the car but kills Tamara. 
The film then centers around the struggles of Robert and his wife Susanne who have lost their first baby and cannot conceive another child because Robert is infertile. Revanche is as much about escaping as it about love, death and class in modern day society. I think an important theme in the film is moving on. The characters in the film want to move on in their lives and get away, but there is also the moving on from death and the reconciliation the characters have to go through with themselves. The scenery varies dramatically in the film with the dirty and disgusting flats housing the prostitutes at the beginning of the film which then transcends into the gorgeous scenery of a farm overlooking a river in the second half of the picture.
Revanche is a beautiful and emotional journey that the characters in the film and we, the audience go through simultaneously. The lead performance from Johannes Krisch is outstanding and we feel his pain throughout the film and we endure everything he goes through and everything he inflicts on the other characters. The film has a dream-like feel to most parts but there is something underneath the surface that is more real than anything I have seen on the screen for a long time.


5/5