black swan (2010). directed by darren aronofsky.

i didn't watch this movie until late this year. i watched it with my housemate, and by the time it ended, we were disturbed for many reasons. we were distressed that nina's mother treated her like a child eventhough she is an adult, we were stressed out that she seems to be a child craving for approval eventhough she is an adult and should be confident enough to be who she is. my housemate, not familiar with the rigorous trainings that ballet dancers undergo,was aghast at the level of perfection that they strive to achive in their practices. something so soft and beautiful is all but a veneer of sheer strength and resoluteness. may be nina is too fragile to attend to the demands of being a prima ballerina, but the girl before her was not known for stability either. she puts herself through hours of non stop practice that she begins to see things, and you begin to wonder yourself, at the cost of losing your mind, is this all worth it?

i think it is an interesting take on the risks people take to achieve the highest level of perfection in art. art demands you to be critical of yourself, which means you have to be mentally strong to withstand the burden of creativity. contrasting her character with lily, the free spirited dancer who doesnt seem to think too much of what she does and yet dance with ease and charm; unlike nina's perfect robot like precision. who is the real artist here? the one losing her mind in interminable practices, or the one taking it easy chanelling her calmness in her art?

i think there is no easy answer in this one. 

requiem for a dream (2000), trainspotting (1996), stardust (2007) & frozen river (2008)

haven't done movie reviews for a while now like i haven't been writing a lot using a pen. i don't sense any urgency in going to the movies, i find the shows unexceptionally banal.

requiem for a dream (2000). directed by darren aronofsky. 

i watched requiem for a dream (2000) 3 years ago and i don't think i could watch it for the second time. not because it was badly done, rather because it was exceptionally done. like it is saying straight up to your face, "you do this, you will get this kinda shit coming to you, i kid you not". it hit me hard. so was another drug movie by danny boyle, the fame director of slumdog millionaire (2008). trainspotting (1996) is a must watch too, i especially can not forget the scene whereby a baby was dead because she was left unfed for days as all the adults in the house were too stoned to noticed.

trainspotting (1996). directed by danny boyle. 

i don't get that kind of impact anymore when i see the movies aired these days. yesterday i caught stardust (2007) on 412 and i thought, despite the rich allegories what does it want to tell me exactly? so what is robert de niro never played a gay cross-dresser up until now? or am i the one missing the point of post-modernism, that there's no need for meaning in anything?

stardust (2007). directed by matthew vaughn. 

i am just wondering.

frozen river (2008). directed by courtney hunt. 

having said all that, all one needs to do is to dig deeper though the heap of crap being shoved at one's face by the mighty force of commercialism. i watched frozen river (2008) and liked it. nobody acted in this movie, and that's how it should be otherwise it would have been fake and i wouldn't believe it. because if there is any truth in life, we will do anything to survive.

the fountain (2006). directed by darren aronofsky.

There is a strange deadness in the film, together with a callow self-importance and self-pity which become more stultifying with every minute that passes, factors which are actually made worse by the obvious competence of everyone concerned: so much technical élan is being expended on this narcissistic and flimsy stuff. It looks frankly like an unbearably uxorious tribute from Aronofsky to his fiancee, Rachel Weisz. Her face is always being bathed in holy white light and she wears an outrageous "saintly terminal-illness case" outfit of woolly white hat and coat, looking like Ali MacGraw in Love Story. The fantasy scenes are all fantastically over-designed in a very new agey way; Clint Mansell's musical score is coercive and declamatory, and the whole premise is in any case dishonest. Dying young is a painful, horrible business, full of agony and rage and indignity. For Aronofsky to imply that it can be brought off looking all floaty and snowy and ethereal like a pale L'Oréal model, and that there is a spiritual superiority and sacrificial redemption in death from brain cancer - well, that is naive. And slightly creepy.

as reviewed by peter bradshaw, the guardian.