Why was Leslie Manville from "Another Year" not nominated for a "Best
Supporting Actress" Oscar? Well, aside from the obvious-- no powerful
Hollywood machinery working on her behalf to get her the nomination--
well... that's about it. That's why she doesn't get the nomination.
That's why so many mediocre actors and actresses do get nominated.
So when Natalie Portman gets all tearful in a few weeks, convinced that her
peers really chose her for this award, for her acting, for her dedication,
for her unremarkable impersonation of a ballet dancer in a few select
shots.... think about that last shot of Leslie Manville in
"Another Year" realizing that whatever it is Tom and Geri have.... she
doesn't.
"Joan Crawford would have killed to play her. " NY
Times, on "Black Swan".
And noted: "Dancers often spend more of their time
in front of the mirror than before an audience".
Okay-- first of all I do want to say this: I think Natalie Portman is one
of the most enlightened, smartest actresses working today. You may not
want to see her as inspiration for your acting technique, but she is model
of wisdom in every other respect. I'm not kidding-- check out what she
does and says in her non-Hollywood life. She's very, very wise.
I'm going to add to that-- Natalie Portman is at a priceless, searing
stage of her life. She is smart enough to perceive the twisted effects
of celebrity (the perverse obsession with her role in "Leon: The
Professional" for example and the sexualization of her image as a boyish
naïf from all of her movies), but not old enough yet to resign herself to
it. She expects better. But she is pleasingly reflective
and down to earth and astute and it will be sad when she stops commenting on
it and it becomes a part of her permanent emotional armour and we will have
lost something.
However...
The biggest problem
with "Black Swan" is that director Darren Aronovsky and star Natalie
Portman-- who, by the way, is really a terrible actress-- never really shows you the
payoff: a talented dancer at work. They don't know how. Watch
fifteen minutes of Mike Leigh's "Topsy Turvey", or even "The Red Shoes",
and then try to tell me it's not possible. It absolutely is.
"The Black Swan", in fact, makes the worst mistake a movie of this type can
make: it wallows in the suffering without even hinting at the reward,
and in this kind of narrative, the only satisfactory explanation for the
suffering-- aside from pure monotonous psychosis-- is the glory of the
reward.
Just one example: at one point the director threatens to take
the role away from Nina because she hasn't demonstrated sufficient passion
(which, cringingly, is linked to the director's sexual fantasies). We
are left clueless about just how wrenching, in real life, a decision like
that would be. We are left with the impression of a parent threatening
to take dessert away from a child if she doesn't do her homework. We
are left with the impression that the director actually chose, as his star
of this production, someone he clearly believes is incapable of performing
it.
It's not really like he realizes he made a mistake. It's
like this: the viewer realizes that the director could never really had a
good reason for choosing her in the first place, and the story loses all
sense of believability.
We are left with the impression that someone else could just step into
the role, precisely the opposite of what the director thinks the audience
will think as Natalie Portman crinkles her face unpleasantly and weeps to
tell us instead how much she suffers for her art.
I've said it before--
the rule about showing a believable drunken man is to produce a man trying
(and failing) to stand straight-- not someone trying to look like he is
falling over. Natalie Portman, for 90 minutes, looks like she's trying
to fall apart.
Joan Crawford or Bette Davis could have played this.
