We arrive now at that point in the program where I clear out my Netflix queue and trash movies that have been lauded by all the major critics. This will contain some spoilers, so if you’re the sort of person who has not seen either Black Swan or Biutiful, you might want to stop now. Ditto if you’ve seen either movie and really liked it.
First up: Black Swan. I hated it. Two thumbs down and a hobnailed boot up the kiester. The story of an overwrought dancer who appears to be sprouting feathers around the shoulder blades, Black Swan is an art-house mess that veers occasionally into Brian DePalma-style melodrama. It’s the kind of movie where almost everything that happens turns out later not to have happened — including the salacious scene involving Mila Kunis that I considered the film’s only redeeming moment. In Black Swan, the only thing you can be sure of is that ballet is really hard on the toes.
The film ends with Natalie Portman’s character turning in the best dance performance of her career while suffering from a serious stab wound to the abdomen. The girl is nuts, but she has some moxie. Or maybe the wound is imaginary too — it’s hard to say. I don’t like movies where the ambiguity is so pervasive and pointless. Especially if they’re about mentally ill ballet stars. Dave Bob says rent Chained Heat instead.
Biutiful is a better film, but it unfolds as a tiresome trek through half -a-dozen weighty themes: fatherhood, love, spirituality, crime, guilt and mortality. Also the exploitation of foreign workers. That’s about five themes too many, and not just because you’re looking at your watch well before the two-and-a-half-hour running time is elapsed.
The movie is set in modern-day Barcelona. Javier Bardem’s character is a lesser criminal who arranges slave-like employment for illegal immigrants. His wife is a manic-depressive alcoholic. He has advanced prostate cancer. Things go downhill from there.
While Bardem does have the perfect face for expressing all sorts of suffering, suffering alone wears thin as a dramatic device. In Biutiful, the very worst thing that can happen in any situation is what does happen, and just when you think Bardem’s face couldn’t get any longer, it does. By the end of the movie, you’re putting aside the popcorn and reaching for the Zoloft.
I don’t require sappy endings, but I do appreciate a bit of nuance and restraint when it comes to portraying the essential bleakness of the human condition. I also look for a running time quite a bit shorter than 2:27.
As always, I recognize that there may be other points of view on these two films. Feel free to weigh in below.
An industry plumb out of ideas
My favorite Oscar contenders so far
It ain’t heavy; it’s a heist picture
Now a major motion picture
In praise of Charles Portis
Theater and movie people love stories that are about theater and movie people. Over the years, I’ve grown very tired of those stories. A few are very good, but most are just narcissistic melodrama. They just make me think of that Ian Shoales line, something like, “another self-conscious novel about a novelist trying to write a novel.” Oh, another actor playing a struggling actor… yawn.
To save this from being just a complaint, I think a few good show biz movies are “All That Jazz” (it may be narcissism turned up to 11, but it’s so much fun), “All About Eve” (good all around, but George Sanders is brilliant), and “I’ll Do Anything” (charming, even sweet at times, but not sappy).
I agree on “All About Eve.” Don’t remember much about “All That Jazz” except for the choreography. And I don’t think I’ve yet seen “I’ll Do Anything.”
If we’re talking about good show-biz films, I’d also mention “The Player”.
I haven’t seen either movie and don’t intend to (especially after your great reviews!). I only watch movies rarely these days, as so many of them are forumulaic rubbish (unless you are a teenager i suppose). I liked The Secret in Their (her?) Eyes, which sounds arty but actually is a jolly good thriller, it won the best film award in Cannes a couple of years ago – Argentinian. I watched it on our (UK) equivalent of cable tv a few weeks ago.
I liked “The Secret in Their Eyes” quite a bit. It’s a good example of how foreign (foreign to me, anyway) filmmakers are pushing the envelope in the crime-thriller genre and leaving Hollywood in the dust. Ricardo Darin is also interesting in “The Aura” — another unconventional thriller.
Funny – I almost included “The Player”, but left it out since it’s not exactly of the “actors playing actors” category. Great movie, though. So many great details, like the pitches that we hear at the start. And what a cast!