Black Swan

Discovering that hidden talent, the improvised malevolent sensual complement to your precise demanding technical expertise, with competitors vindictively waiting in the wings, with a smile and a patronizingly friendly remark, ingratiating, lackadaisical, treacherous, while a mental illness, hitherto concealed and dominated, can no longer be subjugated as pressure reallocates psychological resources to spontaneous professional challenges, and exquisitely chaotic repercussions must be embraced. Mother will learn to adjust. Romance is simply an illusion. He could certainly be more of a prick. It's the seductive consequence of perfection. Darren Aronofsky once again coaches his cast into delivering first rate performances as Natalie Portman internally glides her way through Swan Lake. Intertwining an artist's subjective deconstruction with her universal adherence to and revitalization of performance standards, Black Swan suggests the costs of multidimensional characterizations can indeed be extreme, if not everlasting. Smutty and taciturn and evocative and sinister, paranoia is unleashed and interrogated as Nina Sayers learns to dance the Black Swan. While her paranoia is logical, as it increases in proportion to her responsibility it realistically manifests her worst fears and results in her best performance.

The Wrestler

Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler poignantly and poetically presents a multidimensional portrait of a professional wrestler's undesired retirement. Randy "The Ram" Robinson (Mickey Rourke) lives life the hard way and when things come crashing down does his best to reign in that which he unfortunately let go during the more belligerent days of his career. Dashing dancer Cassidy (Marisa Tomei) and estranged daughter Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood) do their best to help piece together the puzzle, but it's a heartbreakingly byzantine panorama requiring a sincerely dedicated degree of patience to comprehend.

The film's strong and Rourke's performance is my pick for Oscar's best actor of the year. The grainy shots and promotional poster credits establish a prominent yet passionately melancholic aesthetic that aptly reflects The Ram's troubles. And it hurts to see him go through it, a spur of the moment man crippled by the financial and humanistic consequences of responsibility. Things happen, not everyone can deal, and not everyone chooses a comfortable career with a pension, regular pay, and wide ranging benefits. The Ram's predicament generally functions as a representative of the aging economic other, the dedicated destitute artist doing what she or he can with what little he or she possesses to bring a bit more cheer to the members of her or his community. And each particular performance electrifies and holistically humanizes what it means to live according to your own individual rules with their own attendant predilections.

There are feelings and points of view that get lost in the rush as you travel from one dimension to another in order to reconstruct daily routines, get by, important pieces of your personal constitution that lie dormant in the unconscious waiting for a specific smell/game winning touchdown pass/deal breaking decision/surprise dinner/work of art to bring them back to life. And The Wrestler really made me feel a lot of the convictions that I had been simply thinking for who knows how long (providing them with an outlet to be revitalized) and that's just one of the reasons why I found it to be such an exceptional film.

Rourke's powerful portrayal of a dislodged, dominant demon, stalwart yet dainty, determined yet spellbound, vigorously demonstrates what it means to succeed while simultaneously pointing out the lesions of loss. Aronofsky once again provocatively illustrates his evocative chops, presenting another infinite requiem for a courageously clandestine character.

The Fountain

At some point, the tortoise catches up. Slowly plodding away, taking his or her time. It’s a matter of effort, avoiding the rumours, and sticking to your choice, elobo solo, the lone wolves. Or tortoises, in this instance. Then again, in this crazy age of genetic experimentation, we can have tortoise wolves, or wolf tortoises, or wolf-tortoise-hares.

Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain relives ye olde Tortoise and the Hare myth romantically and stylistically. Its point is the search for enlightenment, emphasizing patience. Patience throughout the centuries, assuming you believe in reincarnation. Within there are three vignettes interwoven with one another ala Star Trek: All Good Things . . . and Hellbound: Hellraiser IV. Within each, Hugh Jackman seeks Rachel Weiz's heart only to be consistently thwarted by some kind of natural or technological barrier.

Which is a comment on completeness, on the desire for completion. Completion was great before we recognized the I, the “I want this,” the “I need that,” and so forth. Lacking in completion is the problem, being unable to embrace the lack, the symptom, being unable to placate the symptom, the disease, being unable to recognize the disease, the dementia. There’s no dementia to be found within Thomas, for he approaches the confines of reality confidently, seeking a solution to his personal dilemmas, recognizing life’s struggles and pursuits as allies, confidants, compatriots, and friends.

Elated bliss, purity of love, of knowledge within and without a culture. In The Fountain first vignette, Thomas discovers the path to enlightenment through the sword, through raw unraveled determination, in the interests of love. But as it unravels, it consumes him, the maddening price of being confronted with absolute knowledge with no means of being able to understand it. A television in ancient Greece. Hence, the woods subsume his body and he becomes one with nature. In the final vignette, after having been reborn time and time again, he discovers the cure for his spiritual ailment, the culmination of his pursuits, a moment of divinity, of temporal transcendency. Consequently, his reality’s implode like those of the Phoenix or Quetzalcoatl, the tortoise having reached the end of the race, and won, the ethical divinely embracing the political. For a beautiful moment, an instance of knowledge, Apollonian reason and Dionysian hearts.

Thinking and beating together.