I am now going to sum-up
Darren Aronofsky's new movie in the same trite way that he seems to view his audience:
Black Swan is
The Wrester... but for girls.
In both films the viewer is tethered to the main character both in story-line and actual shots. There are few long shots that allow the viewer to see the entire scene, keeping the reality subjective and our sympathies as a viewer tightly wrapped around the main character. In the case of the Wrester, it was a pro-wrestler going through all the physical and mental anguish of aging within a sport that requires youth and vigor. This pressure is more deeply felt in the case of the Black Swan, as dancers have a much shorter shelf-life and are often women. Females are notoriously competitive and are often nasty among their own. All women feel pressure to stay youthful, a primal instinct that has been legitimized and commercialized as part of modern society. This pressure is intensified in more image-conscience fields such as dance and modeling.
We never see the motivations of other characters. They mostly act as catalysts. Where the Wrestler attempted to show real-life familial drama as the backdrop for the exploration of the character's psyche, the Black Swan uses hallucinations. I think in the case of the Wrestler, the relationships within the plot were cliche which ultimately gave the whole movie a made-for-tv feel: an abandoned daughter struggling w/ the return of her absentee dad, a stripper with a heart of gold, an aging athlete attempting redemption.
In the case of the Black Swan, it's true that the supporting cast is comprised of oft-portrayed characters: the overbearing mother, the seductive teacher, the bitter aging dancer. However they act in addition to and along with the hallucinations of the protagonist, which really utilizes the closeness and limitations of the director's shots and allows for a more intense and frightening story. The film is actually very Polanski-esque borrowing from both Repulsion and Rosemary's Baby. The setting of the film and some of the creepy elements are reminiscent to Argento's Suspiria.
The people that I know that seem to enjoy The Wrestler are people who like Mickey Rourke. Personally, I couldn't care less about the guy. I do absolutely love Natalie Portman and think she did a wonderful job in dancing a feeling whether it be vulnerable, uptight, or aggressive. Portman is truly able to convey emotions without ever opening her mouth. I'll admit my general thoughts on these films may have been dictated simply by my interest in the actor playing film's main character, but I think it has more to do with the amount of empathy I feel as a woman to the struggles of Portman's character over Rourke's that is the main issue.
**Slight Spoiler**
The ending of both films is pretty similar, the protagonist finally achieves their deadly and deluded sense of perfection. There are actually so many similarities between the films that they come off as two sides of the same coin, one masculine and one feminine. Both characters are dealing whit the idea of becoming obsolete. There is a need to breakdown years of self-created emotional defenses to truly realize who they are and what they can achieve, yet both have to kill themselves (and publicly to boot) to get to this point.
As a viewer, it's completely unfulfilling to see a character that you've been forced to empathize with so much do so little with the lesson he/she has learned through the film. As a cinefile, it's frustrating to see basically the same movie twice with little to no real innovation between the two. The ending in the Black Swan seemed just as trite to me as the relationships in the Wrestler, however the end of the Wrestler was much more cathartic and interesting. Unfortunately, neither movie showcased the talent of the director as promised by his earlier films.
