When I watched The Red Shoes, I cried and cried and cried. The story of an aspiring ballerina having to choose between her passion and her lover, each vying for her soul is heart-wrenching.
Like the story of the ballet, Swan Lake, the protagonist, Vicky dies in a poignant scene, falling from her balcony and hitting an oncoming train. She then asks her lover, Julian to remove her red shoes before taking her last breath, signaling that in this life she can neither be wholly dancer nor dedicated lover, leaving the audience to wonder if it were the red shoes that compelled her to do a pirouette to her death.
I have always known that in order for ballet to be beautiful it had to be painful as well and how sometimes, one has to destroy oneself to attain artistic perfection. But I certainly did not expect Black Swan to be as horrifying as it was. So props to the director for defying conventions and disfiguring the ballerina, her body and her ballet. Sure there were many beautiful sequences on stage but there were also many ridiculous moments that made the film-going experience more akin to a rollar coaster ride through a haunted house disneyland style.
At every corner there was an evil doppelgaenger in the waiting, armed with the same bag of gory tricks stolen from a haunted house, ready to blur the line between reality and pretense, and then there was, Leroy who essentially suggested that in order to be a successful ballerina, one has to "touch themselves and live a little". So when the credits rolled rather abruptly, I felt like my car had finally come to a standstill, the safety bars were lifted and we were being taken back to the safe zone. I had enjoyed the ride but I did not feel for the characters in the show, and more troublingly perhaps that I neither cared if Nina lived to tiptoe for another night or if in that moment of catharsis she had attained perfection.
And as if that was not bad enough, I was haunted by Freud and the voice of a certain lecturer who use to drum freudian theories into my head. The fact that Nina sat down on a couch before being grilled by Swan Lake's director, Leroy who prescribes sex and more sex for "breakthroughs", her overbearing mother as superego, the absent father, and their crowded and equally fragile apartment crammed with pink stuffed toys and a delicate musical box, and then there is her absolutely wild and unrestrained 'black' swan side, standing for the ID, I suppose.
Of course the film has the potential to impact every viewer because the forces that have been dramatized on screen are forces (that according to Frued) preside in each of us.
I guess it left little impact on me mostly because this is my Ego writing, cloaking my unconscious.
But here's one thing I did like about the movie - the beautiful dress Nina wore to the toasting. It was especially divine!
I can't find a picture of it! :(
Like the story of the ballet, Swan Lake, the protagonist, Vicky dies in a poignant scene, falling from her balcony and hitting an oncoming train. She then asks her lover, Julian to remove her red shoes before taking her last breath, signaling that in this life she can neither be wholly dancer nor dedicated lover, leaving the audience to wonder if it were the red shoes that compelled her to do a pirouette to her death.
I have always known that in order for ballet to be beautiful it had to be painful as well and how sometimes, one has to destroy oneself to attain artistic perfection. But I certainly did not expect Black Swan to be as horrifying as it was. So props to the director for defying conventions and disfiguring the ballerina, her body and her ballet. Sure there were many beautiful sequences on stage but there were also many ridiculous moments that made the film-going experience more akin to a rollar coaster ride through a haunted house disneyland style.
At every corner there was an evil doppelgaenger in the waiting, armed with the same bag of gory tricks stolen from a haunted house, ready to blur the line between reality and pretense, and then there was, Leroy who essentially suggested that in order to be a successful ballerina, one has to "touch themselves and live a little". So when the credits rolled rather abruptly, I felt like my car had finally come to a standstill, the safety bars were lifted and we were being taken back to the safe zone. I had enjoyed the ride but I did not feel for the characters in the show, and more troublingly perhaps that I neither cared if Nina lived to tiptoe for another night or if in that moment of catharsis she had attained perfection.
And as if that was not bad enough, I was haunted by Freud and the voice of a certain lecturer who use to drum freudian theories into my head. The fact that Nina sat down on a couch before being grilled by Swan Lake's director, Leroy who prescribes sex and more sex for "breakthroughs", her overbearing mother as superego, the absent father, and their crowded and equally fragile apartment crammed with pink stuffed toys and a delicate musical box, and then there is her absolutely wild and unrestrained 'black' swan side, standing for the ID, I suppose.
Of course the film has the potential to impact every viewer because the forces that have been dramatized on screen are forces (that according to Frued) preside in each of us.
I guess it left little impact on me mostly because this is my Ego writing, cloaking my unconscious.
But here's one thing I did like about the movie - the beautiful dress Nina wore to the toasting. It was especially divine!
I can't find a picture of it! :(
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