Black Swan Analysis: Horror Elements and Accessible Psychological Thriller

[00:00:01][Music] hi i'm michael and welcome to beyond the screenplay the podcast for each week we do a conversational deep dive analysis into a film today we are talking about black swan the 2010 film directed by darren aronofsky screenplay by mark hayman andre heinz and john mclaughlin i'm joined today by part of the beyond the screenplay team brian bittner hello hello and alex cayetas hello and joining us once again is fellow youtube video essayist writer actor maggie mayfish thank you for joining us hello thank you for having me for this gruesome tale i guess yes we were just joking off mike about how apparently we only bring you in to talk about movies that have to do with like descents into madness what are you trying to say what are you saying about yourself as a fellow youtuber these are the real questions we're talking about black swan last week we talked about whiplash because there's a lesson from screenplay video that is comparing these two films and it was one of the early videos that i made on the channel was a lot of fun it was a fan favorite and so it's been fun revisiting these films because i haven't seen them since making that video back then watching black swan again confirmed for me that i really enjoyed this movie like it's just such a ride of insanity like it's so much fun to watch nina go crazy and it's disturbing in all the ways that it should be disturbing and unsettling and i love how the filmmaking puts you into her headspace all the stuff i love this movie i remember alex watching it with you uh there's like a common theme on the podcast where alex and i have watched a lot of movies together but alex i feel like we saw it at the arclight and it might have been my first arclight movie that's a good first arclight movie i was definitely uh yeah went over immediately with uh with the sound the sound in this movie in a good theater is amazing right yeah so i really enjoyed the movie alex i know you love the movie we'll we'll get to you but i want to hear from you maggie what are your thoughts on this movie what was your first viewing if you remember it however your thoughts on it changed tell me about your relationship to black swan yes yes uh i i feel like the first time i watch it is probably a very universal experience i say this knowing that my sister had the exact same experience that i did while we were living in separate states where uh we watched this movie and we're like oh we might be gay or at least a little bit um and quite honestly for a lot of women i think this is that movie one because as we mentioned right before we started recording it is surprisingly very sexy and very like effective you know when it is trying to present that um and also it was like ballet so like every girl went to see it just because you know how often do you get you know like a freaky ballet drama um so yeah i mean so that was my that was the first time i had ever seen it um yes rewatching though uh the thing that really surprised me i guess is that it's like so structured for it being you know very like you know we think of it as a yes this descent into madness um but as i was watching i was like man this is like a producer's dream like like the the the ballet guy he says about like five times i need to see your black swan and like not like really just everything is like nailed home a lot of lines that are you know i think maybe even now would have probably been like subtext or just like text like like oh did you have like a lezzy dream about me like everything is very like said out loud um which like you know in that regard is a very clear movie it's very clear and very effective yeah because everything is so clear you know he's able to have those like i call it like the baby throwing moments from his mother you know like spoiler alert um but you know those very like visually effective parts of the film because yeah everything else is just like oh yeah you know they even say in the beginning uh you know the swan dies at the end so you know it's very right very set up uh which is not a bad thing yeah again if i was a producer i'd be like oh great you know let's go but you know that's also yeah it's a it's not a bad thing i mean it's so it's so iconic you remember exactly what black swan is and i think again yeah it's in a way very clear movie while also being you know not that yeah well again i think it all of that helps make it so accessible and i think that's why it was like successful and like was popular among people because it's like you're saying that the basic you know parable story is there on the surface it's very clear it's sort of telegraphed from the beginning this is what this is about but the experience of the movie isn't about you know decoding what the plot is right right we talked about this maybe a little bit on titanic we've talked about it in general but like sometimes having a movie's structure be just very clear and simple lets the audience like not have to worry about that and then be able to lean into just the emotional you know experience of all of that to the where swan story wow oh like where are we where where's one yeah it's a wear swan story as well it's also a movie where like the the setting and the story world like allows for just sort of no subtext like this isn't you know a family sitting around the dinner table like quietly saying what they feel about each other like this is just people who have egos and are like gotta get stuff done and like they don't have time to to engage in subtext and that kind of thing which i think helps helps it feel like it's not just poorly written it feels like no these are how these characters would talk in the story world yeah yeah it feels more sharp than like a meandering yes yeah right yeah it feels very intentional very like style soap opera eat like at designs but again like yes yeah it kind of fits but i love it yeah yeah cool well so brian did you see it when i came out did you see it in theaters what was your first i definitely didn't see in theater but i definitely did see it at some point in that first you know chunk of time that it was out that first year or something and i was looking at arononski's filmography and i was like you know all the that first five like pie through black swan it's like all of them i saw around the time they came out thought wow that was a really good movie like it's my kind of thing i like that it's like dark and artsy and stuff some of them like i went and bought the blu-ray and then i never watched any of them again i just realized i was like i've never actually re-watched any of these movies but like i also remember them really well which is interesting so it was really nice to revisit black swan and you know knowing what it was and be able to like appreciate everything about it but also i haven't seen it in 10 years presumably and i felt like i remembered everything like maybe not some of the smaller things but like it's just such a it's such an explosive movie and such a visual movie and such a emotional is not the right word but it's just like it's like a stirring movie that like i just remembered all of these like shots and moments and that kind of thing like when she's looking at the paintings for the first time i was like one of them's gonna look at i remember this from 10 years ago and yeah i just i really like the movie um and we can get into to why but i like that you know obviously it's this movie about these these two sides of things you know as you were saying i'm not guessing the white swan i'm also guessing the black one four times in the first 20 minutes of the movie even just by nature of what it is it's like this isn't a movie for people who want to see ballerina movies but also people who want to see like dark weird horror movies probably don't want to see a ballerina movie and it's like by its nature it is this sort of light and dark thing which then you get obviously with the natalie portman character and the mila kunis character and to the natalie portman character is transforming into and all that stuff so obviously the major theme of this movie which we will talk about a ton but it's uh yeah it's just something that like that also is a very simple thing right just like light and dark and like how you embrace those are engaged with those and that kind of thing so it's like all the stage is set up for literally um for for the movie to get dark and weird and interesting because everything else is sort of so simple and not surface level but there's not it's not trying to be complicated in just like the machinations of what the movie is yeah absolutely we'll definitely get it to all of that but alex i want to hear from you tell me about your relationship with black swan i mean i just [ __ ] love this movie like i love this movie so much i mean part of it was that first impression because it was early early years in l.a uh going to the arc light hollywood and it was in one of their bigger theaters with the crazy the sound is turned up to like maximum like before it's painful but it's not quite painful it's like almost at the edge there and this movie when you see it in that setting is an experience you know it's like der nardovsky is not subtle with this movie right this movie is big it's big in every single way it just reminded me like what i love about seeing a movie in a movie theater you know it's it's that kind of all-enveloping cathartic insane rapturous experience and it's like what i want basically he gave me what i wanted from going to movie theaters so i already i'm just happy and then the more i revisited it the more i just appreciated like we've been we've been talking about what a beautiful blend it is it's it's both going to these kind of crazy david cronenberg body horror places total like nuts insanity hallucinatory descent into madness yet it's also very accessible it also is very well structured yet it also is just you know it's doing fun stuff with its production design and it just it seems like it's just firing on all cylinders and unafraid and unembarrassed about being big and being melodramatic and too much you know like it's it's okay with all that to your point i was gonna say i i think at the midpoint is when natalie portman's character says no to her mom that shuts the door and it's like yeah yeah like yeah very technical but also of course yes like that makes the most sense for you know the movie yeah right so and so it kind of hits my sweet spot because i appreciate movies that can be accessed by anyone that do speak the language that we're all used to in watching a story unfold and yet can push the audience to like uncomfortable places and push the boundaries of like what we're gonna be able to deal with to take us to that like crazy cathartic finale where it's just like overwhelming i've always appreciated naronofsky and of course working for a dream i saw like in high school and i was like whoa that made me feel ill and i want to throw up now but it's amazing like a director did that to me uh the fountain for it's kind of some of his weird flaws you know when i saw that in theaters that kind of gave me kind of this woe experience like i just like went on a trip and that was nuts and black swan feels like kind of this culmination of different parts of aronofsky because you know in the fountain it's it's a movie that he had like storyboarded and like did a graphic novel about before he even made it because it took so long to get financed and produced so you can feel in that movie every shot is really like exactly framed and he's like the present day is all squares and like all these all square windows and the past is triangles and the future is spheres and it's all like it's almost too much like high concepting perfection and symbolism in a way it's almost there in the theme of black swan of the marriage of the looseness and the perfection but it feels like there's something in black swan that is a marriage of like the requiem messiness and the fountain perfection which is you know you do have this really kind of aggressive commitment to every set like setting is black and white and all the costumes are black and white there's these exceptions of like pink and greens in nita's apartment and there's the really rigorous attention to detail but then the whole thing is shot hand held and the whole thing is super 16 millimeter in like verite style and yet it's a very like intentional verite it's not a messy we'll fix it in post verite it's like every shot feels intentional so it just it feels like this amazing like what the characters have to do in the movie it's this blend of loose and tight and and just yeah i just it's it's my favorite of his movies because it does feel like it brings the best parts of him together the parts that i appreciate the most all together into one film right i think the best example of that is the the handheld scenes on stage where every like everyone is dancing and the camera is zooming around and it's like it feels so messy and chaotic but then you think about the the like care and precision that had to go into that to actually capture that well the in the moments that it's catching are like you know pitching all the right angles of the faces for the right what's being played in that moment which is very precise actually but it feels effortless and fluid yeah yeah so anyway yeah i love this movie [Laughter] i was just going to add to your point that the way that darren aronofsky utilizes the more like horror aspects and you know when he start like it almost makes it easier to um like identify with because you know it's that abstraction of like we know it's not really about ballet but like it's also really really not about ballet and that you know gives you room to apply it to so many things and not to again compare it to whiplash but whiplash in contrast is very much like in reality in the moment um so with that movie at least in my experience i know a few jazz people who like don't like that movie because of the depictions of things where it's like it's a lot easier to do because there's no abstraction you know if they had made anything bigger or larger than life those things wouldn't have mattered as much and you can kind of you know reap larger implications from it whereas this is like you know threading those together to make something bigger than what it is right right it's kind of okay if ballet isn't perfectly perfectly represented because we're seeing it through the perspective of somebody going insane yeah becoming a literal swamp this is the only time i thought of it when i was watching it it reminded me more of birdman than especially with like the ending i was like oh okay that you know like that to me you know was again very much like taking the literal um and kind of judging it up for effect yeah it's funny how like this movie is so unlike whiplash in the sense that like the tone and the plot and all that kind of stuff are so different and yet almost every like external plot point or sort of surface level plot point is exactly the same you have this good protagonist who goes through this dark transition to basically ruin their real life to become this like dark success at the end you have this problematic mentor who basically has very strange ways of getting trying to get the best out of their performers and then obviously it's this competition set in this world where uh and then also this relationship with with the parent figure who they don't want to be like and then it's also every other supporting character is just the other people in this story world basically who are competing for attention and trying to be perfect and trying to be the best and then you even get the shots like the the little slipper shots and stuff just like a whiplash you get the spit coming out of the valve and like it's there's like so many things that feel so similar for two movies that are that like couldn't be more different the gruesome details right yeah so something that is different that popped into my head while you were you were just laying all that out is that both movies do have a competitor person that's coming in to replace you know the protagonist right or threatening to replace it but it's interesting because in whiplash ryan connolly is his name right like i feel like he's just there to cause problems for uh our hero but in black swan the relationship between nina and mila kunis's character lily lily thank you is more complicated where it's like nina's threatened by her but also she embodies everything that nina needs to be in order to become the black swan and so there's this weird tension of kind of an attraction of like i want to be you but also i'm threatened by you and i feel like a lot of especially the middle of the movie part of what keeps it so interesting is watching that dynamic and watching nina wrestle with all of that and why the crazy night out that they have where they run into the winter soldier yeah and the club and it's a difference between them that i think helps so much signal where nina's head is at and how she's slowly transforming herself from white swan to black swan and then the movie just has so much fun with the playing around with like what what which part of that was real which part did you make up like it's yeah i just love i love throughout the movie how it does that and just very definitely navigates you're never quite sure what's real and what isn't but somehow by the end you you feel like you retrospectively can understand what actually happened i feel like that's a hard thing to pull off where you're not the movie isn't just completely cheating it all does add up and can put be put together so you have an understanding of what happened in reality but you also understand the headspace the character was in the whole time yeah that's like the uh other directors that have said this i'm sure but ryan johnson has said it recently the um yeah they're like not tricking your audience and darnowski is absolutely a director that you know doesn't feel the need um and probably doesn't want to you know do any sort of like trick or yeah just like show you one thing but it was actually another like i think he would agree that yeah that like cheapens your experience and you know sometimes when that happens it feels like the director isn't respecting you as like you know not he's never or yeah like this is like seamless with you know with the reality and non-reality and also i was gonna add that um a lot of this movie like we said earlier is like straightforward and so in that way some things end up being kind of simplistic you know like the oh you're old that's why you're being replaced you know some things are reduced to like a more straight or you know uh shorthand um but the relationship between yeah nina and mila kunis i don't remember literally lilly yeah like that was beautifully complicated yeah and yeah and so i like that the movie spends like that much time like digging it cuz that yeah that's one of the only movies that really like jennifer's body somewhat kind of you know has peaks into that similar theme especially how like women are pitted against each other and how like they compete yeah i mean so for all the things that are again very like straight and uh straightforward their relationship is so engaging to watch um especially as she's losing her mind at the same time i love the design of lily's character it's so perfect that she's from san francisco you know it's like there's kind of like the the uptight new york nina and then there's the loose you know let's roll on some mali san franciscan right what's interesting about her character is she genuinely does seem to have some empathy for nina and actually is trying to offer her some advice at times maybe it's all part of a plot to replace her eventually but in the moment she is offering like to be her friend and to be there when she is kind of at her lowest moments with the with vincent cassell that's what makes her their relationship interesting it's not just a one note we're competitors and now like we're hate [ __ ] or something yeah it's like there's actually reasons for them to be drawn to each other and for nina to genuinely kind of want to be like her yeah there's reasons for us to kind of want them to be friends yeah i think back to what michael was saying about sort of the uh the movie not feeling like cheap in the way that it plays with reality and and surreality it's like you don't get this big reveal at the end like this is almost a movie where lily could actually not exist at all and you realize that character is only in nina's head and there are definitely scenes where she's not there you know i think the the cool scene that i stuck out to me this time is when she comes home with lily and her mom is yelling at her but her mom is just talking to nina and the first time you see them come in you see like the front half of nina in the mirror and the back half of lily in the other mirror or vice versa so it's like they're split into one person you know but i don't need this like aha montage at the end where you realize like lily was here at these times and only what and that's when it starts to feel cheap like a i think like secret window or like these movies that you know like where it's like oh right the movie that stole like the twist from a movie a very popular movie that had recently come out so it's like when you get the reveal that you know uh lily wasn't in the dressing room with nina or whatever it's like okay like that's fine because it sort of all feels like this is the journey we've been going on with this character the movie wasn't trying to trick you into thinking this was real when this wasn't the movie is entirely operating in this like this is just what's going on in nina's brain right now whether or not this scene actually happened or whether or not this scene actually happened isn't really important because this is all nina's experience as she is going on this journey basically yeah my favorite little example of how the movie does it in a really effective way is you know as nina's having her big downward spiral she goes and visits beth and the hospital and beth is sitting in the chair and has like grabs the nail file and starts like stabbing herself with it and the progression is nina's watching beth stab herself and then beth becomes a nina double stabbing herself nina runs and then gets in the elevator and then looks down and she has the bloody uh nail following her so it's like she probably just stabbed beth to death baby that's such a fun like way of revealing all of that information uh and so yeah i love that and speaking of doubles and maggie you brought up birdman this is the other movie that does this well was this was the movie the first time i'd seen a movie do a thing that i remember imagining like in high school and film school of like it'd be so cool to shoot a character in a mirror but somehow not show the camera and black swan was the first one to use visual effects to like paint out the camera in mirrors and mirrors are such a huge part of this movie again for very obvious like symbolism reasons but and and birdman also does this that's what that comparison but it also speaks to you know the way this movie uses visual effects is kind of going back to the kind of duality combo thing that we were talking about earlier where it's shot on 16 millimeter it's handheld it's very verite but it has 300 visual effects shots but they're all used in this subtle way that just enhances again the emotional state of the protagonist and so i also just really appreciate it from a technical standpoint of when it uses special effects when it uses visual effects and how it has so much fun playing with the mirrors and the doubles and putting nina's face on different people at different times i feel like it's a really excellent example of how you can use visual effects in a way that don't call themselves out and only enhance the storytelling so just want to say that because they're very well done yeah and even real quick just the um the shots that are not special at all but sort of evoke that mirror thing two i'm thinking of are the first time she sees lily from the other train car and then later when she comes out of her apartment and lily is standing both times you just see the back of her head so it's nina looking at the back of this other character's head and it reminds me of the famous magritte painting where it's a character looking in the mirror but the reflection is also the so we're seeing that the back of the character the the subject's head twice but once in the mirror where it should be forwards so it's like even when it's not doing a special effective thing it's still sort of constantly giving you this mirror thing or or like you said now her face is on somebody else you know the woman coming out of the tunnel or when lily comes in through the doorway through the dark and and she's like who is that and it's her for a second and then it's you know all that stuff right it's not super in your face like it's not trying to drill it into your brain that was not supposed to be a pie reference um but uh but it is but it is just sort of like constantly doing it so you're always having that like that dark mirror kind of theme in your head part of what i love about those the double moments is if this movie's supposed to put you in unis headspace and feel like you're going insane that's what makes you feel like you're going insane is when you're not looking at some obvious visual effects insanity but rather this person looks too much like you or the person passing you is weirdly familiar it's that unnerving feeling and it's fun when a director can find a way to use cinematic techniques to recreate that uncanny feeling because i think uncanniness is a very delicate thing to try to represent on film and this movie does it very well in many of those wait what did i just see kind of sequences right yeah hey guys michael here so a couple weeks ago i shot a music video with alex it was a ton of fun it's this kind of dark abstract concept video and over the course of the weekend we got a ton of great footage two and a half terabytes worth of footage to be precise that is a lot of footage to transfer to someone when working with them remotely especially because a lot of cloud file transfer solutions limit you to just a couple hundred gigabytes this is where massive shines massive is a file sharing service that lets media professionals quickly transfer terabytes of data to anyone in the world over the cloud there are no limits on the amount of data you can send and massive has 150 servers worldwide which means whoever you're sending the file to will be able to download it at a maximum unthrottled speed transfers are encrypted so no one but the sender and recipient can access the files and sending files with massive is super simple you don't need a subscription to sign up or a complicated it setup just pay as you go at 25 cents per gigabyte sign up for massive today using massive dot io slash beyond dash the dash screen play and get 100 gigabytes free towards your transfer that's a massive dot io beyond dash the dash screen play for 100 gigabytes free the link is in the show notes thank you to massive for sponsoring beyond the screenplay well and so something we talked about in whiplash is you know obviously it's all creative people we can kind of identify with this you know the obsessed performer thing maggie i'm curious if you have any of that and if that's do we think people that work in creative fields can't appreciate this more or in like a specific kind of way because we kind of know that that crazy self-pressure that we can put on ourselves i would say i would say yes and no um and i i do think this is the one area where the straightforwardness of the story isn't as effective because i mean by the end you know she does die but like she believes she you know put on a perfect performance and like that's the ending and it's like okay well none of us none of us are actually going to die for our art and like darren aronofsky certainly is not going to you know die for his art like tarkovsky died for his art but like you know we you know like very few people in this day and age do that like yes there are parts of our life that you know we can ruin just from being driven creatively but i also think that there's you know such a conversation of not doing that at least even when i was young i knew that like no matter what even though i want to be a creative in the future like these have to be the things i put first you know like i think at this point like that's a lot rarer to come by that doesn't say that doesn't happen but they're probably more likely to be like real estate moguls than like you know aren't it like that's kind of what i think is like there are absolutely people like that and there are absolutely people like that in the arts like however for the most part i think arts education like encourages um you know self-care self-reflection the things that would like have deterge you know like any other dancer from maybe going through this so in that regard and again like darren aronofsky you know making it bigger than ballet like you know there there are a lot of things there that like actually on a personal level it actually may not resonate with you know just an artist you know an everyday artist at least personally but that being said there were a lot of things that like he got scarily right like um again like the women's relationship like it's so accurate and when you pointed out earlier how yeah mila absolutely you know would be supportive of nina there's no reason why she wouldn't be and that's something that like women know you know like wow we are very competitive a lot of times we do you know try to help each other and i think a lesser director would have yeah gone a different route of oh yeah they just like hate each other and like we've seen that a million times and it's also like not accurate so i would you know this is a lot more accurate the the mother character also like oh like killing and accurate and like uh oh wow um also barbara hershey is so great oh she's so this is so good fantastic um and also like the the like harassment stuff like that was even handled you know it was handled pretty accurately and like you know kind of framed the way it was framed felt very like accurate so there are so many things that he got right that it's like again i don't really need as an artist to be like oh yes you know it's like you know i too wish i could kill myself for my creations like the romantic ideal yes yes that that part is very romantic whereas a lot of other aspects are very like scary and visceral and like factual and uh yeah so in a way i think the characters do a lot more than his like theming of like you know yeah it's interesting because i think there definitely was a narrative at some point you know in i think early film school film brain me and i know michael we you know we came up together through film school and stuff of the idea like the great artists like do kind of like have to kill part of themselves to make the great art like there is a a sacrifice must be made to the gods in order to create something amazing and i think yeah i i like like many of us as i've gotten older i'm like that's not important in life and other things matter more and it's fine yes and also you are still an artist so and all all those things like seep into your art you know like i think it actually does show how like because nina is obsessed yeah she like has no life she is alone all the time like it's stuck with her mom like is infantile in a lot of ways and like written as in you know she in a lot of ways cut a lot of things off that makes her deeply inadequate to do this creative job like you know she's supposed to be the black swan like you know you know she she did all the right things from her perspective but yeah okay there's an interesting kind of uh parable there of you know if you only focus on technique and craft and don't actually have a life at all then you really can't be a great artist because you have no truth to draw from you're just focused on the craft in this kind of one-dimensional way also yeah i just want to before we move on from the mom character right barbara hershey i think it's one of the best most you know it's it's it's great like melodrama almost campy at times which i but i love it i wrote can't beat my notes i was like this is this is this movie's can't be like you may disagree but it is yeah it can't be but in a way that doesn't feel like it's trying not to be like the camp feels intentional and i think barbara hershey's like performance it feels like the campiest part of it in the best way where she's that desperate just unnerving mother figure who both wants her daughter to succeed to kind of do what she never could and also hates her for it and also is deeply jealous and deeply torn about what she even really wants from her daughter there's so many contradictions in their relationship and it's just all there in every single scene with them and it makes it so uncomfortable right and barbara hershey's just like face is somehow just amazing to be this like unnerving domineering mother presence it's just white amazing casting right and i think that the campiness again as i said at the beginning like it is part of the story world because literally every character in this movie is either a performer or tomah who you know thinks he's god's gift to art basically so it's french french but it's like so everybody is allowed to give this performance because like those people do exist in real life the people who like i was a dancer back in my day so i speak like this still to this day like why like you're just we're just having a conversation you know but like those people are out there and this movie is just full of that kind of performative person you know and natalie portman's performance is really interesting because she's also big and performative in this movie at the beginning but in the entire opposite way like she the movie not just her but like the movie is making a point of how damir she is and how today you know it's like everything is very quiet and very intense right um yeah exactly but then of course what what that gives us is is this transformation into into the where swan you know part of her basically who then by that finale you're like oh my god this is the same actor we saw the beginning of the movie but from a completely different place well like like those shots of her kind of in the side backstage area as the black swan where she's kind of like breathing with this intensity and her skin is like you know rippling or whatever right it's just it feels like a completely different organism than like previous natalie portman in this movie which is very impressive yeah yeah going back to the mom quickly i felt a lot more empathy for her this time around like every watch through i have because i think you get the the sacrifice that she made to have nina and like gave up her career and that she just wants me to be healthy and happy and is maybe saying don't kill yourself for this role maybe it's better to not so like i've always felt that but i felt it more so this time and like it was more ever present in every scene and so i think that's just just another layer to barbara hershey's performance that i think is really great and i feel like the the mom also introduces the way sound is used in this movie in a really interesting way because the first time you see you know nina wakes up and then she's at the beginning of the movie and then stretching and you see the wide shot of the mirror and then like the dark shadow passes by and like you hear that right and it's just her mom but it's like setting up like how the mom feels in nina's mind so i feel like i always think about the mom think about that sound and how she felt at the beginning and then think about her in that kind of penultimate sequence where she's sitting on the doorknob like trying desperately to keep nina from doing this thing that she knows it's gonna be bad and nina just grabs her already broken hand and squeezes it it's like it's just so yeah it's a very heartbreaking transformation that i was really into this time around it's interesting you mentioned the sound of the mom passing and that's part of the bigness of this movie is it embraces tropes in sound design from just like straight-up horror movies like big horror movie sound design is put into these like domestic environments you know and you have the kind of like the giggling in the surround speakers behind you or the kind of just these ghostly sounds that are usually reserved for just kind of like a b horror movie and i love the way aronofsky just kind of takes all those genre tropes and puts them into domestic spaces or you know the ballet studio the more i was watching this movie on this this time around i'm like this is pretty much a straight up horror movie by the end like this right there's sequences that are just like oh this is just a movie like a horror movie scene it's not even just borrowing from it it's just that's kind of the genre it's tipped into now which is interesting because i never really think about this film as a horror movie you think of it more as kind of like a dark psychosexual thriller or something but he does go to that full-on body horror full-on jump scares like there's even a there's a there's the masturbation jump scare which is one of my favorite moments but it cuts to the mom sitting there it really embraces like just really yeah the big genre tropes of horror used throughout the movie yeah we were watching with my partner and keep in mind we watched we have watched like every horror movie you could think of we have seen and the part when she like reveals her like bloody toenails or like oh oh oh i had to look away but like yeah and turn around like he doesn't like he he likes visceral reactions from his audience and he utilized that to like the um 10th degree uh in this movie yeah uh because even the sound of her feet as she's like you know touching her feet but yeah it's awful and like when she's at the bathroom there's like a little bit of skin on her finger visceral is a great word for this movie though yes very much it is michael i feel like because you when you were doing stuff uh with sound works collection didn't you interview the sound designers of black swan uh we did yes you told me i think they said something about darren arnovski hates when people are in a theater and they're like looking at their watches because they're kind of bored or the movie isn't captured their attention and he was like this movie's the opposite of that like there's no part of this movie where your mind is kind of allowed to wander because it's a slow scene or a quiet scene where nothing's really happening this whole movie part of what i love about it is it's just insane intensity and momentum like there's really no part of this movie where you can stop to really breathe for very long before there's a jump scare before there's something kind of horrifying happening even settings like the fundraiser banquet that's like a nice setting she's peeling her finger off or we know the rider's right right next to her and scaring her you know it's there's no there's no space where you're totally safe in the world of this film right yeah i had my phone on me to take notes as i normally do when we're when i'm watching something for the podcast but it was definitely the last 25 minutes of the movie where i was like i kept like finding myself like looking down to write a note and looking i'm like no i just have to set my phone down and watch the whole finale of this movie i can't i don't need to take any notes right now it's fine because because of exactly what you're saying obviously all of that ramps up in the finale of this movie where things are just like boom boom boom boom you have no quiet respite conversation moments or anything like that i'll put a link to that video i'd forgotten about it until you mention it alex but yes that was in a previous life i helped shoot interviews with sound designers and sound mixers and craig hennigan who's the sound designer of this had a lot of really good things i remember to say now about how they approach the sound and how much of a storytelling tool it is in this movie as as we've been talking about yeah so that was a really fun video to make i'm interested in what everyone thinks of music because when it came on the first thought i had was like oh yeah ballerina music is boring um but like i would never got bored with it but i'm curious well i think what was kind of brilliant about clint mansell's approach to the music was he took yeah the tchaikovsky like just kind of very classical nice ballet music and twisted it and made it scary you know like there's sequences that are just just straight up you know this is kind of like a big part of the ballet where people are jumping and something but it's over a scene where nina's like stabbing somebody or you know something horrifying is happening and he really kind of beautifully takes these elements from the actual ballet swan lake and i think he does alter them and then bring in his own work to make that kind of nice classical music into scary music which is really fun and i love how it also allows once again part of the bigness of the movie is big orchestral ballet music is big and and it's fun that this movie's kind of allowed to use that that kind of a huge score over sometimes like small scenes but make them feel like really epic and right it's kind of it has it's earned its right to do that because the whole thing is sort of a parable for swan lake and is you know nina is acting out the ballet through her story in a lot of ways yeah you get those horns for the jump scares they're like you know but it's exactly what you were saying like the campiness that the movie is is like swimming in basically on purpose like it's just sort of this decadent like every aspect of the movie is trying to be big and kind campy's not quite the right word but that's sort of like we are not trying to do the subtle version of this at all and then yeah his his score work is taking all these things together it's taking this horror element and this ballet piano you know kind of motif and everything and like just putting it all together in the same way the movie is putting all these things together it's also funny how clint mansell is one of my favorite composers and i listen to his score work all the time but this is not a score i can really listen to just like while i'm doing work or something like that because it is so in your face you know it's like i don't listen to a ton of john williams either because it's like it's the kind of thing that is doing exactly what the movie needs it to do but then it doesn't sort of for for me for other people great but like for me it doesn't work as like i'm gonna put this on while i'm writing or while i'm doing something because it's like i can't i can't take my my brain away from what it's doing you know the one exception is you know i think the the couple of scenes in the movie that really are just pure clayman cell are there's kind of like a i don't know what would you call the theme like love theme but more maybe like erotic theme or something but there's there is a very clint mancell only score that goes with her exploration of her sexuality both in like the masturbation scene and in the scene with lily you know at the midpoint of the movie that's a really nice just there's like one or two tracks on the on the score that are that background music appropriate clip myself and the rest of the score is just bonkers percussive huge stuff that you really can't have it for writing yeah that makes sense though because like those are the moments where she finally thinks about like herself you know and like in a way is being selfish so it's like her song versus like you know every the everyone else that she's trying to please right she's not focusing on her performance and her ballet and her craft she's focusing on just herself it is also kind of poetic in a way that um that this is the first time i watch it where i notice that aspect of it is like she actually you know she does try to like learn about herself you know which is you don't see a lot of movies where like her obstacle is that she doesn't know herself well um and to see her kind of like explore that is interesting and yeah i guess it ultimately turns her into a bird but like that aspect of like self-discovery is like very like interesting and how she almost like over corrects by you know being evil uh and then in the end yeah she dies but she seems to feel like once she did a good job and also kind of you know got back at the people that you know in her life she was being mistreated by in a weird way she kind of lived she like lived fully even if it included like you know stabbing maybe wouldn't write her in the face like she lived fully right and encouraged maybe for like problematic like reasons and like rushed and pressured to do it which is probably not the not in a heartbeat right that you want to explore yourself yes it was definitely not her own her own self-discovery story which i think is also made very clear you know as opposed to like a spirit away or it's like oh you know the protagonists choose you know to learn about themselves this is like under duress and then it goes bad right well yeah that's sort of a question i had for you guys is like what do you think her actual objective or or what she actually wants in the in the beginning of this movie not from you know obviously she wants to be successful at this you know her art but like for herself personally because we get the sense that there's this sort of like recurring theme of guilt almost where it's like every time she does try to be herself then something goes wrong like she's in the shadow of her mother or like she sprouts some body horror thing or whatever but then when she actually does start opening up it's like not even by her own volition like you said you know touched on michael it's like this problematic like the man in control told her to go do it basically but then once she starts changing then she sort of wakes up and it becomes potentially this part of her that was always there that is now finally being awoken i guess the question is like do we get the sense that she did want this kind of thing or that she was kind of happy with herself not necessarily with her relationship with her mother and like her entire lifestyle but like she seems fairly content with who she is as a person at the beginning she doesn't have these sort of i wish i could do x y and z monologue that you get from like chara from movies where a character is like trying to blossom and trying to find themselves and that kind of thing so i don't know thoughts i think for me that is kind of what makes it like a like a real horror movie because you're right like technically there's like nothing that wrong with her life in the beginning she says she wants to be the best you know she says that out loud but we can see that overall like she's basically con you know she feels like she knows herself and she like seems happy yeah the the film kind of attributes it i think to the extreme pressure you know there's a lot of focus on everything around her um and especially you know like highlighting the mom and kind of explaining about how she got to this place so yeah i mean in a way it is kind of sad but also like true and especially you know especially as a woman in entertaining like you are told to be a certain way all of the time 24 7. so in a way like that is a thing that again that he gets right you know especially the feeling of needing to do all that but yeah it certainly doesn't feel like a journey for nina it feels like the horror of like yeah we're watching this person like be in a mouse trap that like right we all wish that we could get her out of um but because of past circumstances and because of her current predicament and because she has is telling herself that these people around me are right and if i'm telling myself i want to be the best then and they're telling me how to do it you know she believes them and does it and like that's horrific especially as a woman to watch other women just do things because they are told to do like that is you know that's a horror like i think that is one of the things i have gotten from the movie on repeat viewings and i really appreciated about it is it's really about the impossibility of embodying these two like age-old archetypes you know it's like the perfect virgin like the virginal white swan and the dark seductress sexual like hot black swan asking women to somehow be a hundred percent both of those things in these like performance kind of artists you know spaces or in life or in life right yeah in general like everywhere yeah it's like it's impossible yeah they make a very considered effort in this film and i think it's accurate it's like i briefly talked about this in my stanley kubrick episode but like any actor if they're a good actor could give you both you know because you're just acting but in this movie like he is asking her to change like he makes it very personal it's completely personal like she ends up you know [ __ ] him to like get the part basically so yeah it's like they are asking her to change like not just play two characters because right that wouldn't be a movie and like and like you know an actor could do that but they're asking like her nina like you need to change to get this role like will you do it but also we're casting you because you already embody a different archetype right but somehow you've got to be both which is impossible catch 22 which i think is very cathartic in a way because remember one of my really good friends from high school jennifer she loved this movie and she was like i've never seen a movie just on the surface with like all the symbolism and you know whatever just create the double like show the double bind that women are in which is just like men want you to be both this and this somehow at the same time 100 perfectly which is like not actually possible yeah and clearly crazy-making and drives you to kill yourself and go insane right and also you see it as like a generation you know just like and the in the giving of the name like my prince you know like you see that it's just a never-ending cycle like right no one ever meets up and everyone is kicked out like the second that they're perceived to not you know yeah it's right that's kind of like the extra sad thing about beth is like maybe she was able to be this perfect thing but there was a timer on it and then she got too old and now you're out right so like there's that fun thing when you win you don't yeah yeah and the movie also makes a point to show you know when when she's being too white swan you know in the rehearsal space tomas like you know would you have sex with that girl no no one would like make her feel bad for being that but also then when she gets the part she comes out of the bathroom and like horror is written up so like also shows that if you are either of those like it's also bad like there's just there is no correct path through this maze and that's what leads to her demise yeah why don't we go around and say what lessons we're going to take from black swan because i think there's a lot of interesting things to talk about maggie do you want to go first you want to go last you have a preference i'll go first i feel it mine's very straightforward but i think darnowski would appreciate it my lesson takeaway is that like in a lot of ways as we discussed like sure it's like a simple story i don't like saying that because it sounds like i'm reducing it but i'm not and i think that helped uh in the end create like such a movie that people remember it's so iconic but you know everything was very they said all their feelings you know um it was very big simple done extremely well um and also very emotional which is you know darynowski it likes to put you in emotion so like those two together created a fantastic viewing experience whereas some of other daranovsky's movies i feel like if he had just kept on to that idea of simplicity it would have helped with a lot of other projects which again like i'm sure is part of the self-doubt that he probably feels which i'm sure he you know wrote into his nina character like if you're if you're a filmmaker simple is okay and like it can be amazing and oftentimes very impactful because it's very clear what you're saying and you can still do you know very cool incredible stuff on top of it and just because something is somewhat simple does not you know make it less so darren arnofsky yeah that's almost become a running theme on this podcast the like the weirdest movies that we talked about on this podcast so far have been like apocalypse now and the shining and the lighthouse and black swan and they all have that like you could say what the plot is in one sentence you know and then there's like the big lebowski is the complete opposite of that like no one knows what the plot is no matter every time she's in the movie but like that's fine because that is part of the joke of the movie but like if you want to make this a weird kind of art horror movie just it's about a person who goes to a place and there's a thing there and they have to deal with the thing great okay like i get what the plot is now you can spend all day doing all your crazy stuff yeah i'm kind of just gonna piggyback off of that because that's kind of also my lesson and as you were saying brian that's sort of always the lesson but it's such an important lesson and i think what i also noticed this time about whiplash as well in black swan is so you have the simplicity and it's great for all the reasons that you articulated but it also allows for this kind of like cyclical engine of conflict to happen where like the the number of spaces are very well defined and limited the number of characters are well defined unlimited but each film has this kind of flow to the plot where you know nina goes to practice and something crazy happens at practice between her and tomah or lily and that sends her home where then there's something else waiting for her there that then triggers her mental breakdown in some other way that then she takes back with her to the practice space where another thing happens and so within the simplicity there is this kind of engine of conflict that happens because of how everything is arranged you know on the chessboard that is the plot and i think that's why it is still entertaining it's not simple like there's just one thing happening all the time right it's always rotating there's always whatever's happening is building up upon the thing that came before it and so like that's what makes it accessible and fun to watch and also compelling and super dramatic and i just i really appreciated that that it creates this kind of momentum also like you were talking about earlier alex where it's just like every scene like is relentless and pushing something forward and you know how that's gonna when she goes to talk to her mom about it like who knows how she's gonna react to it and like she's gonna have to lock the door and like break her arm like all these things escalate because of the the great design of just the boundaries of the space and and the people within it so good good writing there's the shot where uh her mom just like stands up like i think it's the first time that nina's like pushing back and she says no and her mom like rises and it's like it's just such amazing is that ratcheting up you feel like it's like it's once again it's like a horror movie shot but in a domestic space of their mom standing but you're like oh my god what's gonna happen yeah awesome well alex what's your lesson basically i i love the way this movie is shot and it's interesting because a lot of movies that are shot this way on the surface i don't love i think like for example like first man i thought did a lot of really interesting things and i appreciated a lot of things about the movie first man but i was oftentimes pushed back by the filmmaking where it didn't feel to me like there was always a marriage of like content and approach to shooting that content where it also was taking the approach of we're doing like a grainy 16 mil uh documentary verite thing as if we're just like there with a camera and seeing what happens and i think other movies that attempt that can sometimes feel like we just shot this scene a bunch of ways handheld and then we like kind of just put it together in the edit however we could whereas in this film the handheld and the grainy 16 mil and all that stuff all feels purposeful and all feels like every shot when it cuts to the next shot it feels like the right cut and it feels like it flows it's natural i'm not i'm not disoriented i'm not unless i'm supposed to be um i'm not really feeling i'm all over the place and i think i get frustrated with films where it does feel like the verite style is almost more of like a crutch or a just kind of a default mode of like this is an edgy indie film it's gonna be all shaky cam all handheld but not for any particular purpose and in this film the handheld the framing everything it all feels like it's doing something in the moment and and it's beautiful like the way it's color corrected and just like the really high contrast and the way the visual effects like you said michael are worked into this otherwise kind of low-fi environment is all just so like seamless so it's just a great example to me of how you can use that kind of edgy indie verite style in a very purposeful way in a way that doesn't feel like it was you just didn't have any money or it was you just had to shoot it this way it's it's intentional purposeful and impactful ultimately but yeah it's not handheld and we're just going to get lots of coverage and then like put it together later it's handheld but each shot is telling a part of the story like right right shot has its story assignment and is doing it because i agree a lot of times super grainy handheld is like a you tell that like you're a little unconfident and want people to like take it really seriously right but this is yeah just done expertly and brian what's your lesson uh yeah alex touched on this a bit but i just like you know a movie like whiplash is about technical perfection and it's about getting the timing exactly right and being able to be as fast as possible and that is what i would say 95 of movies about like someone trying to excel in their field are about it's like you have to get faster you have to get stronger you have to get whatever and it's just it's sort of cool and refreshing to have a movie that like we're trying to be the best isn't about being perfect it is about letting go like something we talked about before learning the rules so you can learn how to break them like do all the things figure out how to do everything technically and then where does your own personality come into it you know i think so much good art has like a little bit of dirt to it like if things are too perfect then they can be forgettable like how many times you walked out a movie really that was a perfectly fine movie and i'm never gonna think about it again right and then then you have like the great works of art where it's you know that song has that one coordinate that you weren't expecting or like that one thing's got like the ending of seven where you're like wait how exactly like doesn't fit into this box oh my god sorry not a purpose anybody can theoretically do the same thing the same make the same exact thing if they read a book about how to do that thing and then do it right but only any individual person can do their version of that thing and their take on that thing so it's like yes the technical perfection but also where do you actually come in where does your own uniqueness come in you know and being able to let go of the technical to to let that come and it's white that's why you should always be a little bit drunk kids this movie is obviously a dark version of that like you know nina has her you know it doesn't go about it the right way obviously but i like that is sort of the the ultimate theme that this movie is struggling with is like perfection is not just about doing all of the things technically correctly and that kind of thing it's also about living life and and like you were saying alex just having life experience so that you can then project that back on your art as opposed to if all you do is stay inside and practice all day like that's that's all you're going to be able to express then in your in your craft is this is this is what my experience is sitting in my room and practicing and i didn't go out and get drunk and you know have just like a little bit of realness in in my art you don't have to get drunk to make art to be clear you don't have to be an alcoholic and die of alcoholism to make art and i think that's what's great about the movie on a meta level a little bit is that it it is as we've talked about a marriage of this precision and messiness like it it is capturing that there is life there is emotion in it but it's also intentional and i think that's why for me it yeah still stands out as a really great movie what have you guys been watching maggie what have you been watching recently well i did mention tarkovsky earlier and i did happen to be in the middle of re-watching all of his movies ooh it's taking me a while but i just figure it's relevant uh because as i mentioned earlier very few artists die for their work um and he did but his uh i watched his film mirror um and i think one apt but two you know i always feel like it's good to watch the movies that other directors are referencing and that's when i feel like you know besides the rem using uh losing my religion that's also a reference to that movie but yeah directors reference it all the time so you know if you haven't seen it that's a good one um probably easier to watch than stalker which is also good just very long you know he likes to pull you out into a field and be like what do you think of this um and that's just the movie and you have to sit and think about it um but oppositely i also recommend f boy island which is on hbo max um and is the last thing that i legitimately binged and just like what what a wonderful character study of just like people you know like wow um and i think those are just a as important as crafted are we going to narratives a video about f-boy island oh man maybe i'm thinking about it excellent that's a great great multiple options out there yeah awesome alex what have you been watching uh so i kicked out a coda on apple tv which is the sundance award-winning film that came out just recently and you know i went into it you know it's about it's koda stands for child of deaf adults and it's about a child of deaf adults who realize that she's an amazing singer which is of course the gift she cannot share with her family and you know i went into it kind of cynical i was like i know what this movie's gonna be it's gonna be heartwarming it's gonna do all the like beats and do the things by the end it totally won me over it was undeniably just lovely and you know tear-jerking and wonderful so do you want just like a nice life-affirming lovely movie check out coda nice cool and brian what have you been watching uh well if you're if you're looking for the hot new thing everyone's talking about you've come to the right place i watched the 1946 uh film brief encounter which is written by noel howard based on a play of his i think and directed by david lean who directed lawrence of arabia dr zhivago bridge and the river kwai the framing of the story is so cool it starts with this woman coming home from a train station and she's distraught and there's voiceover in her head of what she's thinking and she's just like can't we don't know what's going on with her but we know she's she's upset about something then she gets home and she's sitting across from her husband and then the whole movie is told in flashback through voiceover of her thoughts what she wishes she could tell her husband but can't so like we're hearing her thoughts about what she wishes she could say but instead she's keeping it you know within and then the actual story when we go to the flashback is she several weeks ago had met this man who was also married at a train station and they through happenstance end up meeting each other again and then they start kind of becoming friends and every thursday they come back and and they hang out again and then that turns into dot dot dot i'll let you watch the movie for yourself but i just like i found it to be so charming and funny and entertaining and i've been watching a bunch of older movies lately and this one just for whatever reason just stuck out as one that i was just so engaged while watching it and then i've like thought about it every day since i watched it so i love this movie yeah i can see you nodding along yeah yeah it's so good so good and it's on hbo max i discovered their turner classic movie uh hub basically they have one there so i've been burning through a bunch of stuff on there but yeah brief encounter check it out maggie second's my recommendation second recommendation sold awesome i started watching a netflix show a french netflix show called lupin or lupon or something if you know how to speak french i'm pretty sure i'm saying it wrong it's basically like a french sherlock and so it's like a limited series and it's a retelling of a french story i guess there are these old french books about a world famous like gentleman thief and like master of disguise but it's like modern and the way that they kind of bring the you know the books that it's all based on into the modern world is really interesting and so it's about this thief who's stealing these expensive diamonds but it's partially to like you know clear his father's name who was framed for stealing them back the day it's it's really it's interesting it's hard to explain a little bit but it's like sherlock like the bbc sherlock it's just a lot of fun it's very stylistic and the lead character is this really charismatic person and it's fun to see him get into these crazy situations and see how he's gonna master disguise thief his way out of these things and like heisty and all this stuff so it's really fun uh i feel like trisha would like it so i need to make sure that she watches it it's very heisty and it makes me really want like a lupin sherlock killing eve crossover and i'm just like i want to watch cool thief people steal things for fun reasons and be cool anyway so lupin or lupon or however you say it on netflix nice all right awesome well this has been our conversation about black swan thank you maggie for joining us always fun to have you here absolutely check out maggie's youtube channel which is simply called maggie mayfish excellent videos some of my favorites on youtube the link to her channel will be in the show notes i want to say thank you as always to the patrons who support the show and make it possible thank you to our producer fitz major and our editor eric schneider i'm michael tucker and i've been joined today by brian bittner alex carlos and maggie mae fish we'll have all of our twitter handles in the show notes so send us a tweet and say hi and we will see you in the next episode bye bye bye bye everybody [Music]