More than a few eyebrows raised at the on-the-nose casting of Winona Ryder ("Perfect? I'm not perfect. I'm nothing.") as a shoved-aside star in Black Swan. But here's one lesson Nina Sayers/Natalie Portman learned from the career of decade-older Beth MacIntyre/Ryder, the woman she's replaced as ingenue of the hour: Be very careful casting your opposite number, your Black Swan.
Nina: "I had the craziest dream last night about a girl who has turned into a swan... but her prince falls for the wrong girl and she kills herself."
Talk about a cautionary tale. There's no danger of that here. Yes, Mila "Sweet Lips" Kunis is crazysexycool as Lily, but there is NO WAY Portman was gonna allow her to commandeer the spotlight on her years-in-the-making passion project the way Winona let Angelina Jolie run off with Girl, Interrupted and the Oscar. (Or the way Gwyneth Paltrow is alleged to have "stolen" Shakespeare in Love from her then-BFF Ryder.) Nat played goody and crazy both. Whereas Noni?
(Regarding) Beth: "I'm almost sure she did it on purpose.... Because everything Beth does comes from within. From some dark impulse. I guess that's what makes her so thrilling to watch. So dangerous. Even perfect at times, but also so damn destructive."
Other cygnet links:
- Steven Shaviro: "But to the extent that “seeing is believing,” and that — in the suspension of disbelief with which we watch movies — we cannot help accepting what is plainly and viscerally shown to us on screen, the sex and the murder and the body horror are as real to us as anything else in the film. They are continuous with, and as compellingly actual as, the feelings that provoke them: self-disgust, the drive towards an impossible perfectionism, sexual jealousy vis-a-vis Kunis and resentment and feeling-betrayed vis-a-vis the mother."
- Steve Erickson: "As the world’s foremost expert on the Cinema of Hysteria, given that I made it up, I can assure you that Black Swan possesses every trait of the subspecies. First, sex is the electric current that not only drives these movies dramatically and gives them their dreamy power but untethers them from the more practical obligations of storytelling. Second, at the same time that these films are imagistic to the point of being hallucinatory, they’re distinguished from the superficially trippy by riveting central performances that are naked to the point of reckless..."
- Kartina Richardson: "Lily (Mila Kunis) is only painted black. Nina is black through and through and through. By denying her shadow, Nina adds layers to it. When you hold something down that’s pushing to come up, it gains momentum."
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This Recording: "In case you haven't seen Black Swan, reading this reveals and ruin nothing. The party game is simple; all things can be paired up and divided into white swans and black swans. White swans have technique but black swans have essential style. The white swan is the brain, the black swan is the crotch."
