The Black Swan Nut

I saw Black Swan over the weekend. At one moment I reached for my BlackSwanBerry to tweet “Holy shit, I should get an Oscar for sitting through this” and saw that I had a text message from my twelve year old daughter.

How’s b.s.?, she wrote. Haha, I meant Black Swan. Sorry for the coincidence.

Except there was no coincidence. Because the movie was pure B.S. In other words, I didn’t like it. And I’m going to tell you why. (If that’s not enough of a clue: This post has Black Swan spoilers, or as I like to call them, time savers. )

As the movie opens we meet Natalie Portman’s Nina, a young woman with a little girl voice who lives in a super pink room with her mother, Hannah & Her Sisters’ Barbara Hershey. It’s entirely possible that they’re actually living in Hannah’s old apartment.

Right away we suspect that Barbara Hershey was a ballerina herself, and a not-too-successful one at that, because even though she’s a grown ass woman, she still wears her hair in a ballet bun. Barbara Hershey serves Nina half a grapefruit for breakfast and Nina rejoices. “It’s so pink!” she practically claps her hands. This is called foreshadowing and gives us a big hint that Nina is a nutjob.

Nina rides the subway to rehearsal and the back of someone’s head catches her eye. Why? Because the back of the dark head has a ballet bun! Can you believe it?! In NYC, of all places. But the Dark Ballet Bun gets off at a stop before Nina’s, so Nina relaxes. One less ballerina she has to worry about!

Except, and I don’t know what kind of psychic you have to be to see this one coming, while Nina is rehearsing with the other ballerinas, Dark Ballet Bun comes in and says that she got off at the wrong subway stop. Haha, those ballerinas sure are ditzy! And Dark Ballet Bun has a pair of black wings tattooed on her back. I wonder if that means anything?

The ballet director, Thomas, has an announcement! The company will be doing a production of Swan Lake. The story is that the White Swan is in love with the prince, but to be set free, they have to have sex or something, but before they do, the prince accidentally has sex with the Black Swan, because, apparently, he is color blind. To be honest, I’m not sure about the details because I just can’t take interspecies relations seriously. Nothing against Black Swan, I couldn’t get into it with Leda and Zeus, either.

Thomas is not sure about casting Nina because although she’s perfect as the White Swan, he doesn’t think she’ll be able to pull off the Black Swan. But since the whole movie is about Nina, he has no choice. He gives her some technical tips, like to go home and “touch herself.” Nina takes this advice to heart and touches herself better than anyone has every touched themselves before or since. It’s kind of shocking that she’s not blind by the end of that scene.

It’s almost as if this movie were made by men, or something.

Oh, I forgot. The scariest part of the movie is that Winona Ryder portrays Beth, who is now too old to be a ballerina. You know, like her ex Johnny Depp is too old to be a pirate.

But anyway, after Nina reaches the Climax of the Century she looks over and sees her mother sitting in the corner watching her. But no need to be alarmed! Barbara Hershey isn’t really there, Nina’s just crazy! Better crazy than awkward, huh?

More good news for the male audience members who were dragged to this ballet nightmare by their lady loves, though! Nina and Dark Ballet Bun go out for drinks and then have sex in Nina’s pink room. This is twice now that we’ve gotten to see Natalie Portman’s O-face, so the Oscar’s in the bag. Except it was a hallucination. But who cares, right? We got some girl on girl action, which is how we know that this is True Art.

Then some other things happen–like Nina deciding that she needs to move out, Barbara Hershey’s paintings mocking Nina, Nina scratching her back and ripping off her nails and some black feathers sprouting from Nina’s back. And Nina throwing out her stuffed animals, most of which seem to be bigger than Nina. I think we’re supposed to feel Nina’s psychosis, but instead what some of us were feeling was “hey, this is funny! How come no one else is laughing?!” (I’m paraphrasing something that Liz tweeted when she saw the movie.)

Overall, I give this movie two big swan wings down.

At its best, it was comical. At its worst, misogynist. Because, you know, women are crazy.

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It turns out that this Oscar season, I’ve seen two movies. Black Swan and Yogi Bear. What can I say? I’m drawn to wildlife.

One year ago ...

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