Hey, Everyone!
I was cleaning up files on my desktop, and found this little nugget that I had to cut from my interview with Darren Aronofsky about Black Swan for the Syfy Channel’s Sci Fi Magazine (see the cover above). I cut the stuff to keep the word count down. I did the interview before I had the chance to screen the movie. And having now seen Black Swan (twice), I think it’s pretty pertinent to make a note of the filmmakers whom Aronofsky cites below. Pick up the mag for the rest of the interview… on stands now.
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“The film is about performance. And what it takes to be a performer, and about artistic expression. There’s the rationality of sanity going on here, and [the question of whether or not Natalie Portman’s character Nina, the ballet dancer] is sane or insane.”
Since he’s riffing on the question of sanity or insanity, and since there seemed to be so much of Roman Polanski’s “Apartment Trilogy” of Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby and The Tenant (about people maybe or maybe not facing supernatural evil in urban settings) in Requiem for a Dream, I asked if Polanski influenced Black Swan at all.
“Polanski definitely influenced the film with his use of the subjective camera [the use of the camera to “see” through a characters POV], subjective sound and subjective filmmaking. I’ve been a fan of his. When I did Pi, he was a big influence. We were definitely inspired by those movies. I think there’s some Cronenberg sprinkled in there. And even the Dardennes [Jean-Pierre and Luc, the two Belgian brothers who made Le silence de Lorna, famous for tight close-ups and hand-held shots] who really influenced The Wrestler, I think that carried over to this film.”
Inside the mind of author Michael Marano 