For a short intermission before we get to the next story bit, I have come to the matter of thinking about the movie Black Swan (some of you may have seen it). I suspect if you're anything like me, you were a big disgusted, confused, and wondering quite frankly how someone considered this a "brilliant" movie. Back in the day when I was doing online theatrical role plays, I loved it when a character would break down to their base elements. You push them hard enough, and they show their true colors and are at their breaking point. As a writer, it's those types of moments that define your story.
Black Swan never has this moment.
Rather than digging into a character as they're driven mad or they're realizing they have split-personality disorder, or even making it essentially a werewolf movie where the character turns into a woman-bird thing, Black Swan attempts to be "artsy" and "multi-faceted" while never actually knowing what it's doing. Sometimes we're seeing this dark psychodemonic version of the main character screwing with her head, sometimes we're seeing her have disturbing issues with her mother, sometimes we see her doing things with Mila Kunis' character, but half the time find out they actually never happened. Although to be fair, everything is trying to be what it is (and Mila Kunis in particular seemed to actually be trying to do her role to the best effort. Her character might have been the most consistently sane member of the cast). And lets not forget all the twisted self-injury moments that are just there to creep the audience out (I still feel my skin crawl at the memory of two scenes in particular).
And in the end... from what I grasped, it never really happened. I guess they ran out of film at that point?
So, how do we fix this?
1. decide on what you're doing! Is Kunis' character out to get Natalie Portman's character, or is it just a misunderstanding? What if Portman starts talking to her evil side and develops full split-personality disorder, then begins to realize throughout the plot that the evil side is actually taking her over? Perhaps we go with the were-(swan?) bit and make it actually happen? Toss in some sort of lycanthropic curse and I think we're golden. Or make it about Portman's character dealing with repression of anger towards her mother, and then lashes out somewhere mid-plot and begins trying to rebuild herself as she's dealing with her mother's meddling. As you can see -- plenty of options!
2. can we move on past all the bloody pointless inuendo? We get it -- there's sexuality, but can we see some character development too?
3. get somebody who can hold a camera without wobbling mid-shot (If the director honestly intentionally had them doing it to add "suspense", then I pity the camera guys).
4. cut the ****ed up self-inflicted injury moments. Really, they -aren't- necessary. All they do is sicken and upset the audience.
5. Give an ending, stick to that ending, have characters not just be static ideas that never go forward. Make at least one character we can relate to. It's not as if we're asking for someone to fire a flaming crossbow shot without looking.
And so, that's about it folks.
The rant ends here.
Tune in next week for the new Bioshock entry!
