Black Swan

I can't promise I've seen this since it came out. I went to the theater. I fathomed more symbolism, more thematics this time. It isn't too artsy to be mainstream, but it almost is. I'm impressed how it walks that line. Barbie awkwardly line-danced between indie and mainstream; Black Swan creeps right down the line en pointe. It's one of the most accessible psycho horror movies I've seen, or one of the most unsettling and artistically ambitious hit movies. Ultimately it's a fairly basic movie, sometimes too on-the-nose (Mila Kunis), but well wrought. It could have been longer; maybe it's because I watched in two sittings, but the second felt rushed. Suddenly we were in the climactic performance. Nina flew from timid to menacing very quickly near the end.

If I had an artistic career striking this balance of art and entertainment, I think I'd be pleased. It's good filmmaking, and lots of people will like it. More importantly, it isn't as ego-worshipping (or ego-annihilating) as most of the art I imagine for myself. If you can make Mirror, good for you, but it sounds kind of miserable. If all I ever made was Black Swan and Interstellar, that's not a bad life.

But I'd blush if you called me an artist. Black Swan is art as career, art as talent; Mirror is art as existence, or as close to it as anything distributed broadly enough I'm likely to see it. Ingo's movie in Antkind is really art as existence -- designed to be unseen.

3/4 decent movie