Black Swan

IMDB
First time viewed: No
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Jordan

It's still great. Although funny to think of all the people that go to the megaplex and think it's just an oscar drama and probably haven't seen a film like this in their life and just don't know what to make of it. Oh well at least Black Swan is getting their money, even if they hate it.

Watching 2nd time, what did I see? A lot. Well first thing I thought of was the significance of the first 5 minutes, the dream she has of being the princess turned into the swan. She is turned into the white swan right from the first frame which makes makes it hard to trust anything that happens in the rest of the film. Although I find keeping an eye on the flashes of Nina's face on other characters is a good indicator.

There is a lot of subtle character moments at the start that foreshadow later events. Easy to see when you know to look for them. A lot of things I picked up with the mother character too.

The second thing I took notice of was the grain. It looks like they used the Canon cameras to shoot all the stuff in the real subway train carts with available light and the rest of it was 16mm.

The sound design still stands out. So much wing fluttering. But this time I hear the music more. You can hear swan lake themes throughout and I read that Clint Mansell used those themes played backwards and upside down in the rest of the film too. I tried working it out and humming it in my head at a few spots. Yeah it's there. I don't know who is going to be able to work that out though haha.

I said before that the style was more grungy realism but I noticed Matthew Libatique's lighting more this time. A lot of the time It looks like very natural available light and also at the end he has the advantage/disadvantage of using theatrical stage lighting. I say disadvantage because the camera is up on stage circling the dancers for the majority of the scenes so hiding the shadows would have been an absolute nightmare. There's a scene where the camera follows her from the front of the stage to the back and she is in full spot light but there is no shadow of the camera... which must clearly be filming from directly in front of her. I don't know what they were doing but it is neat. Even with all those huge mirrors you don't ever see filming equipment. A lot can be hiding with good camera angles but there must have been some digital paint work done, there MUST have been.

And backstage at the end where the guy playing the evil sorcerer walks past and just says "hey" is the most hilarious moment in the film.

I think I'll be seeing this for a 3rd time tomorrow, so let's see how I go after that.