You'd have to be living in a bubble not to be aware of this film directed by Darren Aronofsky and starring Natalie Portman.
The story of a ballet dancer cast to play both the white swan and the black swan in a performance of Swan Lake, this film focuses on the delicate inner life of a performance artist who is pushed to her emotional limit and then some...
This film has received a vast number of accolades and awards already and may win a few more come Oscar time. The praise has mostly gone to Portman herself for this performance.
Aronofsky is one of the few directors working at the top of his game right now (Christopher Nolan is another) and has made some of my favorite films in recent years such as Pi, Requiem for a Dream, and The Wrestler.
While I enjoyed this film as a visual experience I have to admit that I was pretty disappointed in this much hyped film as my expectations might have been a bit high, especially with respect to the story.
Natalie Portman has been much praised for her performance in Black Swan, however, I'm not so sure that she's so deserving of it all. She delivers a good to a very good performance here rather than what many consider to be a great performance.
And it makes me wonder... have our standards fallen considerably with respect to our expectations of an acting performance for it to be considered great, or even remarkable? I think back to the heyday of the 70's and all those great films and their corresponding acting performances from the likes of Pacino, Brando, Duvall, Streep, DeNiro, Hackman, Hoffman, Nicholson, Spacek, Rowlands, etc...
Maybe it's just that too many entertainment outlets today have dumbed us down and lowered our expectations.
I wonder...
