Black Swan

Black Swan

Directed by Darren Aronofsky

I woke up early this morning slightly hung-over at a friends house sleeping on the mattress that they always reserve for guests. I was warm and dozed in and out of consciousness until about 9am when one of my friends was stroking my hair and telling me that my hand had healed well. I'd cut my right hand at a show about 2 weeks ago and probably should've gotten stitches but instead drank lots of beer that night and taped up my hand with packing tape and a paper towel. I used lots of Bacitracin and band-aids and it seemed to heal fast.

I woke up again to another good friend telling me that she needed a ride to work if it wasn't too much trouble. I got up, brushed my teeth, pissed and washed my face. We rode to work listening to Wang Chung and I was sad to see her walk out into the freezing cold. I got some breakfast at a dumb health food chain hot bar and drank coconut water and decided that I was going to go see Black Swan today.

I went thrift store shopping with a male colleague. He was really stoned when I picked him up and said he didn't wanna go to the movies so after finding out that the movie started at 5pm I dropped him off and picked up another friend who wanted to go see the movie.

We pissed and moaned through some mind-numbing commercials and bad "indie" trailers. I like Aronofsky. Pi, The Wrestler and The Fountain are three incredible films so I expected something good. I didn't even have to think about the lighting or the acting or the set design (which is what I usually do at the movies, unfortunately). I was immediately thrown into the story and stuck there until the last frame and was surprised when the credits started. What a brilliant fucking film.

It was shot on two Arri 16mm cameras (the Arriflex 16 SR3 and 416) and the Canon DSLR 5-D and 7-D cameras. I noticed the 5-D and 7-D shots, particularly in the subway scenes. It was nice to see those cameras blown up to a 35mm print on a big screen.

My friend and I sat transfixed for 108 minutes as someone's baby cried and yelped at random intervals throughout the film. Natalie Portman's performance was incredible. Her ability to appear both absolutely fragile and murderous was amazing. All the acting from the cast was perfect, not one miffed line, especially from Mila Kunis and Barbara Hershey. I don't know what to say right now. The film is still with me. I don't want to give away anything from the film. You should go see it immediately...if you're into this kinda stuff, dude.

I have certainly had mental breakdowns in my life due to drug use in my younger years or malnutrition and I can certainly relate to that feeling (albeit not as extreme as Nina's) of being out on Pluto when you sadly see the rest of your world back on planet Earth and smiling and "you just need to relax" and "oh, you're too stressed, you need some rest", "why don't you just take it easy, everything will work out". But it doesn't and no one can fix how you see the world except for you. Since I've grown and taken more responsibility in my life I've learned to avoid the things that make me lose it and have felt happy and good for years now. But as cheesy as it sounds, that Black Swan is always with you, everytime you stumble into the bathroom drunk or forget to use a condom or take one more shift even though you need to sleep or drive drunk or stay up writing all night when you need to work at 6 in the morning.

"Art is war and life is meaningless without it."