ilia_davidovich

I follow Aronofsky since when he was an obscure young director making Pi a memorable feature about paranoia, personality split and obsession. I'm very glad he did another movie about that. As with any of his movies, he is factually never perfect. Pi, Requiem, Wrestler, those movies are not depicting the Math, Wrestling or Drug Abuse the way it really is. But Aronofsky is not teaching Math, he's showing emotions, vulnerability, obsessions and personality disorders. Anyone whining how ballet companies are not as depicted, stop bitching and go watch something else, don't waste your time, you should know by now that it's impossible to predict stock market prices and people don't go nuts from diet pills. Look at those subjects as means to communicate the emotional state of the protagonist. The fight within human mind, vulnerability of human psyche.

Now about the movie itself. It is great. It's claustrophobic, it's intense, it's raw and unpleasant, it's what Aronofsky does so well. The whole movie is so tight in the head of Nina, it's really impressive people are now open enough to such movies, the movie doesn't deserve all the hype, it's clear that many people will not understand it, and many negative reviews proving my assertion. Repulsion and especially The Tenant come to mind when comparing the intensity and anxiety of the action. It's not important if actually anything happens for real, because it's not the point. The point is to show how sensitive people are vulnerable and unfit to live in our society, how life may become unbearable when the person is tense and obsessed.

So - if you want stories about ballet, dance or life of primas - look somewhere else. If you want psychological thriller with some shock and horror attached, look past factual discrepancies, and enjoy solid movie by talented director. I'm very glad I watched the movie which I can compare to The Tenant. I never thought I would. Polanski should be proud his legacy goes on.

This movie is a Russian way of making typical Hollywood movie. Egor Konchalovski should be the son of Konchalovski who filmed in Hollywood, and I generally enjoyed his father's work. In this picture we have a decent performance by Mironov, but I personally don't like his style, his face is very expressive, but I can't believe in what it is trying to express. He's a little bit phony for my taste, he would be much better on stage. All other actors are not required of doing any comparable job. The post-production washes away any effort. The movie is too fast to be suspense thriller, you can easily divide it into 3-4 parts, and each could be a movie for itself, so the pace is very high, I couldn't feel anything about Vetrov and his series of unfortunate events, before the happy end cleared all "secrets", that honestly were too predictive from the beginning. So I wouldn't call it a thriller, since I was not fast enough to be thrilled, I would call it an action movie.

I have to mention this movie stands out by interesting story, decent leading acting and nice cloning of the Hollywood style special effects. I disliked how the apartments looked, and all that refined clothes and make-ups.