BIUTIFUL (Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2010)

Biutiful, 2010, Spain
Dir: Alejandro González Iñárritu
Starring: Javier Bardem, Maricel Alvarez


Alejandro González Iñárritu and Javier Bardem are both incredibly talented people. They have such immense ability to move, and to shake, and to change audiences with their work. They possess God-given talent and they show it off in the remarkable 2010 film Biutiful that comes from Bardem’s native Spain. Iñárritu, is of course, originally from Mexico, but currently lives in Los Angeles with his family. Both men are of similar age, González Iñárritu is 47, Bardem will be 42 in March. Both have gained fame as brilliant artists within the last decade.

Javier Bardem rose through the ranks of actors in Spain during the 90s, working on several of Pedro Almovodar films. His break-through came in 2000, in the Oscar-nominated Before Night Falls. In 2004, he starred in The Sea Inside, which chronicled the life of Ramón Sampedro, a man who battled for his right to die after becoming a quadriplegic. In 2007 came his most acclaimed role, that of serial killer Anton Sugar in No Country for Old Men, which scored Bardem an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He worked with Woody Allen in 2008 on Vicky Christina Barcelona, and has since married co-star Penelope Cruz.


Alejandro González Iñárritu started his path as a DJ in the mid-80s. He became director of the most popular radio station among young adults in Mexico City by the end of the decade. He then went into film. He started a production company with a friend, which quickly became the number one production company in Mexico, Z Films. He directed an extended short in 1995, and then again in 1996. He met writer Gulliermo Arriaga and for three years they prepared the script for their first collaboration: the critically acclaimed Amoros Perros. They re-teamed in 2003, this time in Hollywood, and made 21 Grams. In 2006, their teamwork resulted in Babel, which was nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. They’ve since stopped working together, and Garriaga went on to direct The Burning Plain, his debut, in 2008.

In 2010, González Iñárritu finally released the long awaited Biutiful. It is an emotionally deep and profound film. A journey of a man who is able to see the dead, forced to raise his two children alone, while his wife suffers from bipolar disorder. He runs a few illegal rackets, but makes enough that keeps everyone happy and is able to feed and house his family. Then he receives the blow that he cannot prevent: cancer. Told by doctors he has only “a couple months” to live, he falls into a depression. Faced with this death sentence, he quickly tries to wrap up enough dough so that his kids will have something to live on. His wife is a whore and an alcoholic and is untrustworthy.


Bardem’s character, Uxbal, is not a saint. He involves himself in the human trafficking market, is a recovering drug addict, and struggles to raise his kids on his own. He is also a man who is on a mission to salvation. He wants to keep his family safe long after he is gone. He also tries his hardest to help the families of the illegal immigrants who are caught selling drugs for him and are deported back to their countries safe and out of harms way as well. The other star of the film is Maricel Alvarez, who plays Marambra, Uxbal’s unstable ex-wife. This is Alvarez’s feature film debut, and she is utterly fantastic as a woman who desperately tries to balance her family duties as well as her constant urge for drugs and alcohol, and self-titled “fun.”

Biutiful is a difficult tale but essential and important. It is an extraordinary portrait of a man on the way down, who tries everything in his being from falling too far close to the bottom. Co-written, co-produced, and directed by González Iñárritu and shot by Rodrigo Prieto, the vision of the two men, combined with a wonderful score by another frequent collaborator, Gustavo Santaolalla, creates an almost mystical, and transcendent experience. It is nominated for two Academy Awards this year, one for Bardem’s performance, and another as Best Foreign Language Film. Here’s hoping that it wins one or both. It certainly deserves it.

THE CRANES ARE FLYING (Mikhail Kalatozov, 1957)

The Cranes are Flying, USSR, 1957
Dir: Mikhail Kalatozov
Starring: Tatyana Samojlova, Aleksey Batalov, Vasili Merkuryev


I've started this review several times now. Each time I stop mid-way through and start over again. I don't know how to explain the brilliance of Mikhail Kalatozov’s The Cranes are Flying, except to say that it is, in many ways, the Citizen Kane of Russian wartime romances. In as many ways that Orson Welles’s seminal film was technically brilliant, The Cranes Are Flying (Letyat Zhuravli) matches it with quiet and unassuming precision. Take a film, produced only a few years after the death of the world’s most famous dictator who censored all forms of art and film during his reign, a film that revolutionized the Soviet film industry before world cinema was changed by the fast talking French New Wave, and you have 95 minutes that will change the way you think about movies.

The tragic story trails the lost love of Veronika and Boris, a young couple torn apart by the eruption of World War II. The innovative cinematography brought gloriously to the screen by Sergei Urusevsky, is moving art at its finest. Hailed as a masterpiece after its release in 1957, The Cranes Are Flying remains the only Russian film to ever win top honors at the Cannes Film Festival, the prestigious Palme D'or award, in 1958. The film is a gut wrenching emotional ride that is as beautiful to look at as the most prized works of Michelangelo or Van Gogh.


Its lead star is the beautiful, vivacious, dark haired Tatyana Samojlova, who plays Veronika. The infamous movie starlet Norma Desmond, immortalized on screen by Gloria Swanson in Billy Wilder’s classic Sunset Blvd. described the Silent Movie Era best, “We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!” I noted the French masterpiece The Passion of Joan of Arc in a previous review, which featured a stunning performance by its lead actress Maria Falconetti. Her performance was enhanced, not limited, by the fact that it was a silent film that featured no dialogue, and no music of any kind. It was her face that made the movie so memorable.

In The Cranes Are Flying, it is Samojlova’s appearance that drives the dagger right into our hearts. She is stunningly beautiful, but there is something unique about her facial structure. It is as if pain and heartbreak was already built into her face, hidden behind gorgeous eyes and lips and nose. Her bravura performance earned her accolades and she was invited to work in Hollywood with the best directors of the period. However, communism was still prevalent in the USSR and she was refused entry into America, a democratic state. Her career was cut short by the fact that she was not allowed to star in films made outside of the Soviet Union. She made only nine more films until she stopped acting altogether in 1975.


The Cranes Are Flying has endured as a landmark film in classic Russian cinema. My only fear is that words are incapable of doing the film proper justice. It is a harrowing account of the horrors of war, and a touching story of love that never came to be. Watch it for yourselves, and you will be pleasantly surprised at a lavishly put together film that speaks to the mind, body and soul of any viewer who observes it.

THE SPANISH PRISONER (DAVID MAMET, 1997)

Who in the world is what they seem?
-Susan Ricci

"The Spanish Prisoner" is a con game that dates back to the 19th century. Typically, the con man informs a victim of a wealthy man held prisoner in Spain. The con man then convinces the victim to put up funds to rescue the wealthy man in exchange for a larger sum of money once the prisoner is released, as well as obtaining the hand of a young, beautiful woman, typically the wealthy man’s daughter. The con game ends once the victim has been cleaned or realizes that he has been duped from the beginning. Writer/director David Mamet uses this con game as the basis of his 1997 film The Spanish Prisoner.

David Mamet is a master of words. He is perhaps the world’s foremost playwright, and has been one of the most successful writers of the last four decades. He rose to fame in his native Chicago in the 1970s with such works as Sexual Perversity in Chicago (later adapted into the 1986 Edward Zwick film About Last Night), and American Buffalo. In the 80s he followed it up with Speed-the-Plow, starring his frequent collaborators Joe Mantegna and William H. Macy, Glengarry Glenross, and also began writing scripts for movies such as the 1982 Paul Newman vehicle The Verdict, for which he was won an Oscar nomination for best Screenplay. In 1987, Mamet made his directing debut starring his then-wife Lindsey Crouse, House of Games. The film marked the beginning of one of the most underrated filmmaking careers in recent memory. It also set the tone for Mamet’s most consistent theme – the art of deception. In the 1990s, Mamet continued to write and direct, including Oleanna, an adaptation of his acclaimed play, and The Winslow Boy, which he directed in 1999. Mamet divorced Crouse and married actress Rebecca Pidgeon in 1991, who has subsequently starred in every single one of Mamet’s films. Mamet’s crowning achievement of the decade was however, The Spanish Prisoner, which in addition to Pidgeon, starred Campbell Scott as a naïve, young inventor, Steve Martin in an uncharacteristically serious role as the man who tricks him into handing over an extremely valuable “process” that he has invented for his company. The film also stars Felicity Huffman as an FBI agent, Ben Gazzara as Scott’s boss, and Mamet regular’s Ricky Jay and Ed O’neill in supporting roles.

The first thing that needs to be said is that David Mamet is a master of words. He is an artist of the American language. He is not a filmmaker whose aim it is to create an arty film, or a visually satisfying film. His main objective is to twist around words to the degree that while we are still aware that is English being spoken, it nonetheless remains far beyond our basic understanding of it. There is no other American filmmaker who packs as many twists into one film as Mamet does with his work, particularly with The Spanish Prisoner. Sometimes, I admit, the twists are too much, even for Mamet’s good.

Mamet’s films are not enigmas that need be unlocked. They are not films that require analysis in order to uncover a greater truth. The thing about Mamet is that he does the work for you and uncovers all there is to uncover by the end of the film. That’s what makes his work enjoyable to watch. You are intrigued by the mystery, and know that by the end of it, nothing else will be required of you, because all will be revealed and completed.

Mamet has directed few films the last few years. Since 2004, he’s only made one – the fantastic Redbelt, another film that centers on a rug being pulled from under everyone’s feet, most of all, the audience’s. He has gone back to doing mostly plays, although he has plans to direct another film in the near future, Come Back to Sorrento, once again starring his wife, as well as William H. Macy and Felicity Huffman, whom he has worked with several times already.

Oftentimes, such films go unnoticed. Movies that are entertaining, intriguing, thought provoking, and enigmatic. They feature great casts, are written by talented and well-known authors, and directed by high profile filmmakers. Yet they fly under the radar and remain lost amidst film archives. I wish I had the answer to this question, but I am afraid I don’t possess it. That might just be the answer. There is none.

MENTAL MASTURBATION PART V

For Part five of my series of lists of underrated films, I’ve decided to include a new feature. Now, if a film has a * symbol next to it, that means that the selected choice is an exceptional stand-out. Rarely will I assign this symbol, but I feel that certain films deserve the special mention.

Sherlock Jr. (Buster Keaton, 1924)
The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodore Dreyer, 1928) *
Sullivan’s Travels (Preston Sturges, 1941)
The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges, 1941)
Lifeboat (Alfred Hitchcock, 1944)
Dead of Night (Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden, and Robert Hamer, 1945)
Germany Year Zero (Roberto Rossellini, 1948)
Kind Hearts and Coronets (Robert Hamer, 1949)
Night and Fog (Alain Renais, 1955)
The Killing (Stanley Kubrick, 1956)
Hiroshima mon amour (Alain Renais, 1959)
Knife in the Water (Roman Polanski, 1962)
Hud (Martin Ritt, 1963) *
Play It Again, Sam (Herbert Ross, 1972)
The Sugarland Express (Steven Spielberg, 1974)
The Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1975) *
C'était un rendez-vous (Claude Lelouch, 1976)
The Quiet Earth (Geoff Murphy, 1985)
Caravaggio (Derek Jarman, 1986)
Jean de Florette/Manon of the Spring (Claude Berri, 1986)
Another Woman (Woody Allen, 1988)
Surviving Desire (Hal Hartley, 1991)
Joyride (Jim Gillespie, 1995)
All Things Fair (Bo Widerberg, 1995)
Big Night (Campbell Scott, Stanley Tucci, 1996)
The Daytrippers (Greg Mottola, 1996)
Thursday (Skip Woods, 1999)
Twin Falls Idaho (Michael Polish, 1999)
Audition (Takashi Miike, 1999)
Waking the Dead (Keith Gordon, 2000)
Solaris (Steven Soderbergh, 2002)
Candy (Neil Armfield, 2006)
The Edge of Heaven (Fatih Akin, 2007)
Enter the Void (Gaspar Noe, 2009)

A Parting Note on the Year of Movies that was, and the year of movies that will be.

2009 was the worst year for films by far. 2010, somehow, outdid it. I think there was maybe one or two great films this year. I spent the last month filling up my Netflix queue with nothing but films from the past year. To say I was disappointed with every single one of the two dozen I watched would be an understatement. I neglect to say that I cannot even come up with a top 10 list of films from 2010 simply because I did not see 10 films that deserve to be on a list of the best regarded movies of the year. Instead, I’ll leave with you with a list of my most anticipated films of the coming year.

Before I do that, however, I’d just like to say that the state of film has been in decline for some time now. The 90s ended off with style, and the following decade began with a few hits. But over the last 10 years, it has been a horrible state of affairs in the movie industry. The powers that be control the masses through media and one way to do it is to dumb us down with the movies that are produced. Anything out of the ordinary, anything that involves thought is almost exclusively prohibited. Those films that make it past the aforementioned powers, be it an independent film or a foreign film carries little to no weight. Sometimes the independent and foreign markets fail to succeed and turn out stinkers as well.

Here is a list of films that I am excited to see in 2011. The list is relatively brief, containing about a dozen or so titles that I think will make the year worthwhile. There might always be other surprises. And if there are, you can be sure I’ll be discussing them here on the site. I bid you well.

Movies to see in 2011:

Hanna (Joe Wright, April 8th)
The Tree of Life (Terence Malick, May 27th)
Machine Gun Preacher (Marc Forster, September)
Moneyball (Bennett Miller, September 23rd)
The Skin That I Inhabit (Pedro Almodóvar, November 18th)
Hugo Cabret (Martin Scorsese, December 9th)
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (David Fincher, December 21st)
We Bought a Zoo (Cameron Crowe, December 23rd)
War Horse (Steven Spielberg, December 28th)
Midnight in Paris (Woody Allen, TBA)
Bernie (Richard Linklater, TBA)
Twixt Now and Sunrise (Francis Ford Coppola, TBA)
A Dangerous Method (David Cronenberg, TBA)

RUNNING ON EMPTY (SIDNEY LUMET, 1988)

Sometimes a great movie finds a successful formula because of its components. Because it’s done in a unique or stylish or funny way. Other times, a film makes an impression on you simply because it is a great reflection of life. Running on Empty happens to be all of those things.

One of the very first films I covered for this blog was a Sidney Lumet movie – the 1981 police thriller Prince of the City, a film that was unaccepted by critics and audiences 30 years ago, and still hasn’t received the attention it deserves. A few years after that film was released, Lumet directed another interesting movie, about a family on the run from the law, and it is the film that I have decided to discuss today.

Sidney Lumet was born in 1924. He directed television in the 1950s before making his big screen debut in 1957 with the smash hit, 12 Angry Men, which was up for Best Picture at the Academy Awards the following year. Lumet continued to direct throughout the 60s but failed to re-capture audiences the way he did with his big debut. It took almost two decades for Lumet to find success again, but the 1970s were very kind to Lumet. He produced several masterpieces including the 1973 Al Pacino drama Serpico. He followed it up with Murder on the Orient Express, based on the novel by Agatha Christie, starring a host of famed actors at the time. In 1975, he re-teamed with Pacino on Dog Day Afternoon, another critical and financial success. In 1976, he directed Network, perhaps his most famous work, which narrowly lost the Best Picture Oscar that year to the underdog film Rocky. His career took a detour the next several years, after releasing clunkers like The Wiz, an all black remake of The Wizard of Oz, and Deathtrap, a suspense thriller starring Christopher Reeve and Michael Caine. But Lumet kept making movies, and in 1988, he directed one of his best, Running on Empty.

Starring Judd Hirsch, Christine Lahti, and River Phoenix, Running on Empty centers on a family of four who have been fleeing the law all their lives. The parents, played by Hirsch and Lahti, are former liberation army members who are wanted by the FBI. Instead of turning themselves in, the duo run from the law, with their two kids in tow, to avoid them. The family settles into a small New Jersey town where Phoenix’s character is approaching high school graduation and decides he wants to utilize his musical talents and go to nearby Julliard for college. This of course would disrupt the family circle, which is further complicated by the fact that he falls in love with Martha Plimpton, who happened to be Phoenix’s girlfriend in real life (they met on the set of the Harrison Ford movie The Mosquito Coast two years prior).

This is River Phoenix’s career role. He participated in several high profile films such as 1986’s Stand By Me, as a young Indiana Jones in the third installment of the series, The Last Crusade, in 1989, and the Gus Van Sant coming of age drama My Own Private Idaho in 1991. He continued to act over the next several years and garnered a lot of attention for his acting prowess. On October 31st, 1993, Phoenix walked outside of the club The Viper Room, and died of a drug overdose. He had turned 23 years old two months earlier. His brother Joaquin Phoenix, several years younger than River, is a two-time Oscar nominated actor.

Sidney Lumet is now 86 years old. His last film, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead was released in 2007. Given his age and poor health, it is probably the last film he will ever direct. Lumet’s most famous works are the gritty movies he made in the 70s and early 80s filmed on the streets of New York. The city was a playground for several groundbreaking filmmakers in the 70s and 80s, like Martin Scorsese, John Cassavetes, Woody Allen, and later on, Spike Lee and Abel Ferrara.

Running on Empty is not your typical family drama about domestic disputes. It is a sharply written film that stimulates the mind and touches the heart. The chemistry between Phoenix and Plimpton is extraordinary and gives no hint that what we are watching is a movie, a play, something planned and pre-ordained. Their exchanges are as real as life itself. The movie left me with a smile on my face, because I knew that Lumet had delivered another winner. I made myself discuss the film today because it would be a real shame not to. It’s that good.

DOCTOR ZHIVAGO (DAVID LEAN, 1965)

They say that David Lean's 1965 magnum opus was the last great epic in Hollywood history. Whether or not this statement is true is debatable. What is clear though however is that in the long career of David Lean, it might be Doctor Zhivago that is his most glorious accomplishment.

Lean's career began as an editor in the 1930s. He began directing during the early 1940s and by the end of the Second World War, he was regarded as one of the top filmmakers in all of Britain. 1945 saw the release of his first big success, Brief Encounter, which has now been adapted into a Broadway show earlier this year. Brief Encounter was a stark portrait of a romance between two star crossed individuals who meet at a train station over the course of several years. A year later, Lean began collaborating with actor Alec Guinness, a working relationship that lasted until Lean’s final film in 1984. Lean won his first Academy Award in 1957 for The Bridge on the River Kwai. A war epic about an American soldier forced into building a bridge while in a Japanese POW camp, it won 7 Oscars, including Best Picture. Five years later, history repeated itself, and Lean won his second Oscar for Best Director for the film Lawrence of Arabia. The film exceeded the Oscar tally of its predecessor, winning 8 Academy Awards, nabbing Best Picture as well. For his next project, lean tackled the famed Russian novel by Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago.

The 1960s turned out to be the most turbulent decade in cinema history. The decade saw the release of many French New Wave films which sent shock waves through the industry. New Hollywood films also changed the way movies were to be made for the next several decades. The old studio system was falling, and individual freedom for filmmakers was rising. The coming years would be unkind to aging film legends like John Huston, George Cukor and John Ford, and saw the arrival of younger, edgier talent like Martin Scorsese, Mike Nichols, and Francis Ford Coppola. This is what makes Doctor Zhivago so unique and impressive. Made exactly at the time of this important transition, it utilized the old school ideals of a generation of filmmakers that were now being abandoned--and succeeded with flying colors.

Doctor Zhivago stars Omar Sharif as a young doctor struggling to survive with his wife and family during the turbulent Russian Revolution. It also stars Julie Christie as a nurse who begins an affair with the young doctor, and Alec Guinness as the title character’s brother. Spanning several decades from the early 20th century until Stalin’s prime year in the 1930s, it is an epic story of love, suffering, and war. That is probably a logline that has been attached to many films over the course of cinema history. Doctor Zhivago excels in every department in order to stand out. The cinematography feels as if a classic painting has come to life. The acting was marvelous and it is shocking that not one of the principal actors received a Academy Award nomination for their performances.

This was Lean’s final masterpiece, and he only directed one other film before retiring in 1984 with A Passage to India. Despite the fact that Lean has gained attention and fame for his Best Picture winning films A Bridge on the River Kwai, and Lawrence of Arabia, it is Doctor Zhivago that remains the best piece of an epic career.

THE BRD TRILOGY (RAINER WERNER FASSBINDER, 1979-1982)

Rainer Werner Fassbinder is, among film students, historians, critics and aficionado’s, one of the most infamous cult figures in the history of cinema. The man who spearheaded the New German Cinema movement of the 1970s managed to direct over two dozen films from the time of his debut in the late 60s until his death in 1982 from a drug overdose. His most famous work, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul was released to critical acclaim in 1974, and invoked memories of classic 50s melodramas. Indeed, it was the work of American director Douglas Sirk, famous for directing melodramas, that Fassbinder was most influenced by. Shortly before his death, Fassbinder directed a set of films that formed what he called The BRD Trilogy (BRD stood for Bundesrepublik Deutschland, the official name of West Germany and of the united contemporary Germany). The trilogy consists of the films The Marriage of Maria Braun, Veronika Voss (otherwise known as The Longing of Veronika Voss), and Lola, all completed between 1979 and 1982, the year of his death. To this day, the trilogy stands as a testament to his legacy as a filmmaker and artist.

The first film in the trilogy, The Marriage of Maria Braun is a typical melodrama. Set amidst the end of World War II, Maria Braun marries a handsome young man, who then disappears amongst the chaos of post-war turmoil. After months of looking for him, she gives up and has an affair with an black-skinned American soldier. She miscarries their child, and then is surprised to find that her husband is actually alive and well. Beneath the surface is a career performance from long time Fassbinder collaborator Hanna Schygulla (she starred in 23 of his films). It is not a film without flaws, but looking at it from the perspective of an artist, it is astonishingly well shot and put together with an enigmatic ending that even Fassbinder himself probably couldn't solve.


His follow up, Veronika Voss, which is an improvement over the first installment, is a bleak drama shot in black and white. Filled with beautiful, dreamy imagery, the film deals with a fading actress, the eponymous Veronika Voss, and a sports reporter who falls in love with her and desperately tries to save her from a mad doctor who treats her for depression. The story was based on Billy Wilder’s classic 50s Hollywood drama Sunset Blvd. It was also heavily influenced by the life and story of famed 1930s and 40s German actress Sybille Schmitz.


The final installment in the trilogy is Lola. An overly flamboyant portrait of a whorehouse and its inhabitants, the story is centered on the eponymous Lola, an aspiring singer falls for a wealthy businessman staying at her mother’s bed and breakfast. The film can be considered the exact opposite of the previous installment, Veronika Voss. A very colorful film, Lola is as glossy as a weekly gossip magazine, and perhaps the lesser film in the trilogy.


There are certain elements that bind these films together. The most important of which is the theme of torn women in Post-World War II Germany. The stories also all converge around the time of the 1954 World Cup, and all three films feature an African-American soldier, played by the same actor, but who meets different ends in each film, suggesting that the films don’t exist in a normal world, but in the hyper-dramatized world of Fassbinder’s creation.


Rainer Werner Fassbinder completed only one other film after the conclusion of this trilogy. On March 17, 1982, Fassbinder overdosed on sleeping pills and cocaine. He left behind a deep collection of complex work, and at the time of his death, he was working on a new film, Rosa L, based on the life of German Socialist, Rosa Luxemburg. The film would later be written and directed by Margarethe von Trotta starring Barbara Sukowa, who played the title character in Lola. Fassbinder was only 37 years old when he passed away.

BLACK SWAN (DARREN ARONOFSKY, 2010)

Let me preface this by saying that in the year 2010, there was no other film that I anticipated more than Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan. I eagerly awaited the latest efforts from both Martin Scorsese and David Fincher, and I eagerly await Sofia Coppola’s new film as well as the Javier Bardem-starring film, Buitiful. It is Black Swan, however, that I have awaited since word was released that it would be made. Aronofsky, the visceral and thoughtful director of Pi, Requiem for a Dream and 2008’s The Wrestler, directs Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis in a psychological thriller about a pair of ballerina’s who develop a strange relationship while performing together in a production of Swan Lake.

Natalie Portman is flawless in her role as Nina, a shy, repressed girl who still lives with her mother even though she is an adult. At first, it’s hard to buy her as such a repressed girl when she possesses so much natural beauty and charm. But Portman does a marvelous job with the character and I would not be surprised at all if, come awards season, she was the one female left standing among the best of the year. Vincent Cassel does a good job as her controlling, and fiery director, trying desperately to unleash the inner emotions that lie beneath Nina’s hard shell. That, essentially, is what the movie feeds on: Emotion. And lots of it. The film features so much emotion and feeling packed into a 108 minutes, that by the end, you feel exhausted, like you’ve just endured a 108 minute roller coaster ride. The musical score, composed by longtime Aronofsky collaborator Clint Mansell, is a feast for the ears and should receive high praise for illuminating the tragedy of the story.


It was a lot scarier than I thought it would be. It reminded me a lot of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, with Natalie Portman being a stand-in for the Jack Nicholson character. A person who is on the brink of genius, slowly losing her mind, and eventually seeing, feeling, and experiencing things that aren’t there. The one difference, is that in The Shining, we buy into it and for a moment begin to believe in the supernatural and that it is possible to speak to the dead. In Black Swan, however, I found it hard to believe that some of the bizarre occurrences were really possible.

Indeed, Black Swan feels like a film from another time and generation. The movie evokes memories of classic films such as The Red Shoes and Ingmar Bergman's 1960s mind-bender Persona. Another life-imitating-art tale, The Red Shoes centered on a young dancer who’s life begins to mimic the story of the production she is performing in. Released all the way back in 1948, this British film, in vivid Technicolor, certainly must have served as an inspiration to the filmmakers.


The supporting cast of Black Swan is another big factor in the success of the film. In addition to Vincent Cassel, Barbara Hershey also exhibits some of the form that made her a star in the 1980s. Mila Kunis does a fine job as well as a sexy and dark rival to Natalie Portman’s Nina. Even Winona Ryder makes a small but memorable appearance. Aronofsky’s direction is finely tuned, like that of a skilled and seasoned director. The story did take some odd twists and turns that ultimately did not satisfy. I left the film astounded, like I had just stepped out of an opera. But I also left wanting more. More from the story, more from the characters, more from the filmmakers. A unique, and brave film it is. But a true masterwork, which it tries so hard to be, it is not.

MENTAL MASTURBATION PART IV

Another list of understated films that don't get the attention they deserve...

Les Enfants Terribles (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1950)
Orpheus (Jean Cocteau, 1950)
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (Robert Ellis Miller, 1968)
Claire’s Knee (Eric Rohmer, 1970)
Vanishing Point (Richard C. Sarafian, 1971)
Papillon (Franklin J. Schaffner, 1973)
1900 (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1976)
Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979)
Over the Edge (Jonathan Kaplan, 1979)
Foxes (Adrian Lyne, 1980)
Strangers Kiss (Matthew Chapman, 1983)
The Brother from Another Planet (John Sayles, 1984)
Static (Mark Romanek, 1985)
As Tears Go By (War Kong Wai, 1988)
Alice (Jan Svankmajer, 1988)
Metropolitan (Whit Stillman, 1990)
The Rapture (Michael Tolkin, 1991)
Orlando (Sally Potter, 1992)
Living in Oblivion (Tom DiCillo, 1995)
The Taste of Others (Agnès Jaoui, 2000)
Everything Put Together (Marc Forster, 2000)
The Cell (Tarsem Singh, 2000)
Manic (Jordan Melamed, 2001)
Better Luck Tomorrow (Justin Lin, 2002)
Kontroll (Nimród Antal, 2003)
Somersault (Cate Shortland, 2004)
Control (Anton Corbijn, 2007)
Afterschool (Antonio Campos, 2008)
Redbelt (David Mament, 2008)
Funny People (Judd Apatow, 2009)