First time seeing Aronofsky's work.
Intuitively, Aronofsky is super god, and the style of his works is my favorite.
The story of "Black Swan" just reminded me of "Birdman".
One is rehearsing the ballet, the other is rehearsing the drama, so there is a relationship within the play; one is Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake", and the other is Raymond Carver's What do we talk about when we talk about love?
There are also certain similarities in the photography of the two films. There are a lot of close-up shots of the face. Most of the time, the lens is directly attached to the face, which gives people a strong sense of oppression and poses a great challenge to the actors’ performances. The camera in "Black Swan" seems to have a stronger sense of hand-holding. Sometimes people feel that the camera is not stable, and the sense of reality is stronger. "Birdman" uses a well-planned, second-accurate "pseudo-one-shot-to-the-end" shooting method, and the shots appear extremely smooth. Obviously, Steadicam has played a magical effect. The overall picture style of the two films is particularly realistic, but the well-designed smoothness of "Birdman" adds a layer of magic to the realism. A large number of first-person perspective shots that cling to the faces of the characters and walk from behind make both films extremely immersive.
The rhythm of both films is extremely fast, and the audience does not have any chance to breathe. "Black Swan" advances through a lot of fantasy that combines reality and reality, with intense and thrilling close-up shots, and it can be said that you can't take your eyes off it when you watch it. "Birdman" is connected to the scene through a very smooth "pseudo-one shot to the end", and the fast and fast dialogue makes the audience extremely immersed.
Both films reflect the theater work in New York, and most of the scenes take place in the small and closed space in the back of the theater, such as powder rooms, narrow and dim corridors, which can easily create a feeling of depression. The huge pressure and occluded environment of performing in the theater have distorted the psychology of the protagonist.
In terms of style, both films tend to be dark, "Black Swan" tends to be dark, thrilling and suspenseful, and "Birdman" is a dark humorous satire. In terms of structure, "Black Swan" is not as big as "Birdman", and it is not as socially satirical and alert as "Birdman". "Black Swan" is completely from the perspective of the heroine. Her inner schizophrenia, psychological distortion, delusion and reality are intertwined, and the distortion of inner desire is projected into reality, resulting in a film performance that is both virtual and real. "Birdman" has multiple lines intertwined, and the whole story is more grand. Each character has a past story and a present dilemma. Regan Thompson's vain attempt to use the Broadway stage to make a comeback is the main body to drive the narrative forward, which is very acerbic. Mean mad satire of showbiz—perhaps it was his mad satire that moved the old school judges.
"Black Swan" feels more like a "feeling movie" to me. It doesn't want to express much, just to impress the audience and experience the sense of despair and depression of the heroine. This also leads to the fact that the number of dialogues in the film is not very large, and many key plots are promoted by the heroine through imagination or inner self-talk when she is alone. "Birdman" obviously has a lot to express, a lot of fast-talking dialogues, various characters, events, allusions flying around in the dialogue between the two, showing the American entertainment circle like a glimpse, with Hollywood and Broadway are represented by two cores.
The endings of the two films "Black Swan" and "Birdman" are also relatively similar. They both killed themselves in the process of pursuing artistic perfection. However, it is not clear whether it is "dead", and the audience does not know whether it is dead or not in the end, in a state of half-dead. The design of the "play within the play" of the two films also formed a contrast with the real story. In "Black Swan", the white swan in "Swan Lake" finally fell from the cliff; Carver's play, which ends up turning the wall against himself, is like the Icarus that Regan often fantasizes about.
What's more interesting is that the director and three female lead actors of "Black Swan" are all Jewish, which is also a very coincidence. Director Darren Aronovsky, born in Brooklyn, is 100% Jewish. Actress Natalie Portman, born in Jerusalem, whose real name is Nata-Lee Hershlag. The second female Mila Kunis was born in Chernivtsi, Ukraine, her real name was Мила Марковна Кунис. Wionna Ryder, the third female, was born in Minnesota, her real name is Wionna Horowitz. For Jews, it is very common to enter the show business and change a name to avoid their Jewish attributes, such as Woody Allen, whose original surname is Königsberg. I feel that Jewish identity has a certain influence on the film. The heroine's mother is extremely strict with her, hoping that her daughter will become a phoenix, and sacrifices a lot of her career and life to make her daughter successful, which also puts a lot of pressure on the heroine. . This is a very typical Jewish culture, and the requirements for children are very strict, similar to the Chinese.
Finally, I would like to talk about the elements of Russian culture in these two films. "Black Swan" is an adaptation of Tchaikovsky's famous ballet "Swan Lake". At the end of the film, the heroine reached a state of artistic perfection in Tchaikovsky's magnificent Swan Lake music. Rachmaninov's score is used when Regan leaps from high-rise buildings in "Birdman" and flies between New York's high-rise buildings, and Tchaikovsky's soundtrack is used for drinking on the street the night before. The protagonists in the two films have the spirit of "no magic, no life" like Cheng Dieyi, and under pressure, they reach a state of artistic perfection. There is a saying in the Eastern Orthodox culture of "Holy Fool", some crazy, sloppy, nonsense people, on the surface they are fools, but they are considered pious and holy, and they are saints who convey the will of God, and they are quite the "seven sages in the bamboo forest". feel. The ups and downs of Russian culture, the contradictions of personalities, paranoia, fierce confrontation and other characteristics also seem to have a certain relationship with this madness with artistic persistence.
From the works of British and American literature and art, I feel that although Russian culture is different from British and American culture, it is generally regarded as a variant of British and American culture. The concepts of "Russia" and "Europe" are inseparable. Russian literature, music, painting, dance, film and television are often mentioned in English culture. In literature, there are Tolstoy, the dancing nobles in Anna Karenina and War and Peace, who have appeared in countless editions of film and television adaptations of European and American countries; Dostoevsky's "War and Peace" Idiot", "The Brothers Karamazov", etc. often appear in philosophical discussions (I mentioned it in Ang Lee's "Ice Storm" last time). In the painting, Malevich, Chagall, etc. created a modern style of painting. Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, appear numerous times in the story of classical music. Tarkovsky, Bergman, Fenini are equally famous in the European film industry. Ballet is also loved by Americans.
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