BLACK SWAN **** (out of ****)If you’re still trying to figure out what to expect from this hallucinatory horror-melodrama directed by millennial auteur Darren Aronofsky, try to imagine Swan Lake produced by a meeting of the minds between Max Ophuls and David Lynch…or perhaps Powell & Presburger and David Cronenberg...but those comparisons are just skin deep. Black Swan is its own wild beast: a living, breathing monster movie that undergoes a series of disturbing transformations onscreen much like its heroine, from deeply wounded to erotically-charged to both at once, shattering your nerves with a jack-hammer’s intensity and quietly burying itself into your subconscious like a sad, scary dream you think about for days. I’ve found Aronofsky to be overrated, but this is by far his masterpiece and some kind of new classic.
In one of the most mesmerizing performances of her generation, Natalie Portman stars as Nina Sayers, a psychologically tortured dancer for a New York City ballet company, whose talents impress the lecherous director (Vincent Cassell) preparing for a production of Swan Lake. Only when he catches a glimpse of the darker side of this “sweet girl” does he cast her in the dual lead role as the White Swan and Black Swan. As the demands of the part become greater, Nina begins losing her grip on reality and loses herself more in the role, fearing that her understudy (Mila Kunis) will steal it from her. Meanwhile, Nina’s mother (Barbara Hershey), a failed dancer, grows increasingly possessive as the production moves further along. Portman hits the notes of high camp, paranoia, and wrenching emotional devastation so effectively (and affectingly) it’s like witnessing a whole new career being born in front of you. Together with Aronofsky, she has given us something we haven’t seen since the 1970s: a Hollywood art film. How often do we get mainstream films in which the central conflict is one of masochistic artistic passion and expression? It aches with pain and delirious beauty, and here those sensations are not mutually exclusive.
TRUE GRIT **** (out of ****)John Wayne’s Oscar-winning role as Rooster Cogburn in the amiable True Grit (1969) helped cement his star image as an American icon. Forgive my sacrilege: Jeff Bridges is better in the Coen brothers version. Less a remake than a more faithful adaptation of Charles Portis’s novel of the same name, a distinction the writer-director team have made clear in the press, the True Grit of 2010 is not only a superior film, but a poignant elegy for the Western and the genre’s place in American folk culture. The film makes for an entertaining Western in its own right, low-key and deliberately paced, full of gentle humor, solid action, and gorgeous cinematography by Roger Deakins. Joel and Ethan Coen turn this well-traveled territory into a landscape of dreams and psychic imagination with their love of quirky characters and situations, musical language, and poetic imagery. Building on Portis’s themes of vengeance, punishment, and redemption, the film is also a soulful contemplation on the broader issues of mythmaking, death, and the closing of the frontier. We end on a coda reminiscent of the ambivalence in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) that takes us from a turn-of-the-century Wild West Show to a graveyard, with a last line that’s just about perfect.
And, yes, The Dude shows up The Duke as the boozy, aging marshal, who agrees to help strong-willed teenage farm girl Mattie Ross track down her father’s killer (Josh Brolin). Joining the pair is a cocky young Texas Ranger (Matt Damon) ready to claim half of the reward. Newcomer Hailee Steinfeld plays Mattie and more than holds her own with these big stars—she steals every scene she’s in. Bridges and Damon are wonderful together, but Bridges should be considered a national treasure for an interpretation Cogburn so natural you’d think he created it. Those scowls and grimaces, the drunken mutterings and command of the Coens’s trademark idiom, and that one-eyed glare communicate more about the character than any flashbacks or speeches, evoking personal loss and defeated weariness, a penchant for violence, and a basic desire to do good.
