In the new issue of American Cinematographer, Darren Aronofsky (whose film "Black Swan" is heavy on close-ups) is quoted saying:
We used a lot of close-ups. For me, the close-up is one of the great inventions of the 20th century; it allows an audience to sit in a dark room and stare into the eyes of a person who's emoting without being self-conscious.
A primal fascination of the cinema, I'd say. A few weeks back I wrote:
Last spring I was on a panel at the Conference on World Affairs in Boulder, CO, called "Why We Still Go to the Movies." The first thing I said (because it was the first thing I thought of) was: "Permission to stare." I wasn't thinking about any particular movie (the title said "the movies") or about the business or anything like that. I was trying to get at the essential appeal of the movie-watching experience. And, for me, that has always been about looking really closely, and paying rapt attention to what is on view. Remember how your mom always said it wasn't polite to stare? Well, it's just the opposite at the movies.
Cinematographer Matthew Libatique tells AC that most of the film was shot with a 12-18 mm lens, a wide-angle format that creates a subjective effect (subliminal or exaggerated, depending on the shot itself) in which the background wraps itself around the subject in the center of the frame. Like "The Wrestler," "Black Swan" uses what Libatique describes as handheld 16mm (gauge) cinéma vérité to follow the main character around, especially when she's dancing, in rehearsal or onstage. If you've seen the film, you know how this works...
Above: Natalie Portman has an expression of fear and distress -- as if she could break into tears at any instant -- clear into the opening night performance of "Swan Lake" in Aranofsky's "Black Swan." The moment in which she finally changes her pained expression is both a cathartic release and a shocking jolt of tension, like a melodramatic version of the tip of the tureen lid in "Jeanne Dielman."
(tip: Andy Horbal)
UPDATE (12/09/10): I wasn't thinking so much of close-ups when I wrote about cinematic voyeurism; that was the spin Aronofsky put on his observation about sitting in the dark and staring at people.
But, now that he mentions it... another chance to recycle my "Close-Up" essay/dream sequence originally contributed to the Close-Up Blogathon at the House Next Door in, what, 2007?
29 Comments
I absolutely adore Aronofsky's use of film grammar across a range of his films (cf. ECU's in Pi, or Snooricam in Requiem. In regards to the viewer being allowed to 'stare' for two hours without any fear of provocation, I would go further and say that this 'stare' is a complete submission to voyeurism.
It's film language, not grammar
It's also a visual grammar.
What is the difference between film language and grammar (with examples please)???
The Passion of Joan of Arc is the greatest use of close-up in the 20th century in my opinion. Black Swan is the greatest use of the device in the 21st century. It's hard to describe why it is so perfectly used; one has to experience it to see it. Aronofsky is a master.
The cinematography was awful in Black Swan. It ruined the movie for me. Did Ms. Portman study ballet for a whole year just so we could watch close-ups of her face? Close-ups should be used sparingly for dramatic effect, not for an entire movie. And keep the camera still for godssakes. Who ever thought that handheld camera work is more realistic? It's not! Our eyes work more like a steadycam with fluid motion, not bouncing up and down like a chicken. It is totally distracting to be aware of the camera for an entire movie. Booooooo.
Overrall I liked Black Swan (Portman's performance is mostly excellent and the movie reaches its peak when she performs the black swan, however briefly), but I got really tired, really fast, of Aranofsky's trend of placing the subject, usually the actor's face, in the centre foreground of the shot. Your description of the shot's effect is accurate, but I think Aranofsky's over-reliance on it (I'd say about 60-70% of the shots in the movie) causes it to lose its meaning, and it becomes monotonous and boring. It doesn't help that most of the wide shots have the subject in the middle as well...it forces focus on the audience and annhiliates any sense of discovery. I felt like I was being led by the hand through the character's emotional revelation/mutation, rather than witnessing it for myself. Sort of like the complaint many have against Inception, except I think that movie had more of a playful sense of ambiguity. If Aranofsky let his compositions breathe a little, it wouldn't have all felt so forced.
*spoilers*
On a side note, I though Vincent Cassel was wonderful. I liked how he's such an egotistical artiste in the rehearsals but once the actual performance starts he's basically powerless, at the mercy of his dancers. I'd like to know what people think of Portman's kissing him...I didn't think it was romantic, I took it as a sort of "F you" from her to him. His teary-eyed expression after was quite amusing.
I hope the use of closeups in "Black Swan" is better than "The Fountain", where they just highlighted budgetary constraints and horrendous performances.
The dominant shot in "Black Swan" is the Stalker Cam, a hand-held shot that tracks from behind and follows her relentlessly throughout the film. You could almost look at the film as a documentary about the back of Natalie Portman's head. It's a creepy effect and situates the film somewhere just on the borderline of exploitation cinema. A similar effect was used in The Wrestler but to much different effect - giving it a semi-documentary feel - and not as systematically. Maybe it feels different when the subject being followed is as ostensibly sane Mickey Rourke rather than a rapidly imploding Natalie Portman.
As for the closeups used during the dance numbers, I don't think I'm being cynical or dismissive when I suggest that they were necessitated by Portman's inability to dance (she trained like heck, and I admire the dedication, but nobody can learn to even be a remotely convincing ballerina in a few months) and helped cover up her weaknesses.
I can't say I found an awful lot to "stare at" in "Black Swan." Aronofsky was too busy peppering B-movie shock effects for there to really be much time to contemplate anything. Not that I disliked it - I'm not entirely sure what I think of it even after two viewings - but I this was not one of the films of the year that I count as a major source of visual pleasure.
Coming from someone who knows this much: about ballet, I was impressed by Portman's dancing, and I thought her Black Swan peformance was properly expressive. I don't think you have to ask an actor to be a great dancer, only a convincing one, and only convincing to the general public, like me, who, it is assumed, know nothing. People should remember that the dancing wasn't that much more advanced in The Red Shoes, at least according to what Moira Shearer had to say on the DVD commentary. 'Cause I don't know. But it looked good.
While I can certainly understand how a ballet connoisseur might be distracted by Portman's skill level, I'd agree that this sort of criticism is entirely pointless. It's like saying that Clooney clearly isn't a good shot in The American, or that Mickey Rourke can't execute a good pile driver in The Wrestler.
It's about the performance, not the perfection of the craft that actor's character is capable of. To confuse the two misses the entire point of acting in the first place.
And Portman is damn good in this, so give it a rest.
Joel: Your comparisons are no bueno.
Well, I completely agree with you that the close-up is one of the primal fascinations of the cinema, which is not in any way to say that I thought Black Swan worked much at all. (More on that later!) When I read this, I immediately thought not of this picture, or even one of Brian De Palma's, but of Mike Leigh's new movie Another Year, which is fresh on my mind after I was lucky enough to see it a couple of nights ago. The movie is brilliant composed visually, and almost entirely out of close-ups and some medium shots. I've rarely felt so invited to examine the fascination of the landscape of the face in the way that Leigh seduces the audience with this movie. The close-ups of Imelda Staunton that begin the film are astonishing in their ability to reveal elements of theme and character a the minimal use of dialogue (Leigh's usual M.O.). I hope you get a chance to see it soon!
Meh... I agree with Tati that close-ups are rather boorish.
Love the label "Stalker Cam," Christopher Long. TM it now or I'll steal it! Portman trained for a year, btw, but as Apollinaire Scher points out in her FT pan of Black Swan, it takes a decade to make a dancer--hence, the twinkle-toes belong to someone else, hence, you get a lot of close-ups of Portman's face. Jim, I must respectfully disagree--close-ups have been so cheapened that they're no longer holy. (Did anyone else want to dive under the seat at Cyril when the film cuts back and forth for 90 minutes between tight close-ups of John C. Reilly and Jonah Hill?) It takes, as Dennis says, a Mike Leigh to remind us again how deeply a close-up can take you into an actor's soul.
David: I guess that's where Aronofsky disagrees with me, because I'm with you about close-ups and it really bothers me when directors don't know how to use them judiciously (I'm always quoting Hitchcock about saving them for when you need them). I was just glad to see a filmmaker admit that sitting in the dark and staring at people (faces, bodies) is one of the primal appeals of cinema. Me, I wouldn't have put the emphasis on close-ups -- but it is (or was) great to get so close to a big face that you could see the pores, the eyelashes, the whiskers (not so great on the women). This is one reason why I have always sat way up front in the theater: I need to see those details (readily apparent on HDTV now) -- and used to learn so much about the film (and the print) from watching the changes in the emulsion. But we don't have much emulsion anymore...
Close-ups can be great, they can also, when misused is shot-countershot exchanges, make a very large production look like television. There were whole passages of the Lord Of The Rings movie, for example, where I felt I was watching an underfunded, heavily tinted BBC production of Ivanhoe.
Folks what love them the close-ups can still find good ones. Folks like me what love them the elegantly staged master shot are panning for gold in a very dry stream.
I love the close-up from the opening of Samuel Fuller's "The Naked Kiss" where Constance Towers puts the wig on. She gives one of the greatest expressions ever. Samuel Fuller also had great titles for his films, except maybe "Shark", that title's not so interesting.
Laura Mulvey talks about this in her essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema". She says that we gain pleasure from cinema through identification with certain characters (voyeurism). She also talks about females being the object of the male gaze. This directly addresses much of Black Swan. I wouldn't be surprised if you've read it but it's worth reading if you haven't.
In terms of Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan (2010), I feel that several cinematographic components -- as well as other elements -- are borrowed from the work of Dario Argento. Holistically speaking, Black Swan is homage cinema at its most mundane. Specifically, the film is made by a director who has seen — and apparently has no qualms about heavily borrowing from – Dario Argento’s Suspiria (1977) and Opera (1987). Certainly, there is nothing wrong with borrowing from other films. However, if a director borrows from another film, then he should do the following: 1) he should make the borrowed content his own, and 2) he should make his film as great as the film(s) from which he is borrowing in order for his work to stand on its own.
For example, one is immediately reminded of the non-linear narrative structure of Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane (1941) while viewing Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (1994). However, Pulp Fiction succeeds despite borrowing from Citizen Kane because 1) Tarantino makes the narrative structure his own by eschewing the character recollections of Citizen Kane in order to transition from flashbacks to flashforwards (and vice versa) with fades to black and title cards, and 2) Tarantino’s cinematic creativity in terms of dialogue and camerawork elevates the picture to the same heights as Citizen Kane, thereby constituting a great film in and of itself. Thus, while the viewer is momentarily reminded of Citizen Kane during Pulp Fiction, he is immediately thrust back into Tarantino’s film due to its narrative verve and originality.
Unlike Tarantino with Pulp Fiction, Aronofsky fails to follow the aforementioned guidelines with Black Swan. Much of the borrowed content in Black Swan (e.g., painful balletic rehearsals, school-yard backstabbing amongst fellow ballerinas complete with whispers and giggles, the protagonist’s compromised psychological state and eventual downward spiral) is so obviously lifted from Argento’s Suspiria that the viewer is unable to effectively lose himself in Aronofsky’s narrative. Aside from these elements, numerous plot points are also borrowed from Argento’s work. Specifically, in Black Swan, the previous Swan Queen (Wynona Ryder) is hit by a moving vehicle and, consequently, she is replaced by her understudy (Natalie Portman). As a result, the old Swan Queen is upset about being replaced, and she is vindictive towards the new Swan Queen. In theory, there is nothing wrong with a little Ryder/Portman cattiness. However, this plot point is taken directly from Argento’s Opera with nary a change. To add insult to injury, Aronofsky cannot match the widescreen compositions of Suspiria and Opera. If he is going to borrow from another man’s cinematic canon, then he should not compound his theft by trying to emulate his colleague’s visuals. In the end, Aronofsky fails to make this borrowed content his own. His final product suffers from homage fatigue, which only makes the viewer long for the films from which Aronofsky has borrowed.
P.S. I have two screen captures that further illustrate the above points. Specifically, one is from Suspiria and one is from Black Swan. The similarities are remarkable. If you would like to view them, then please let me know.
Don't forget Polanski's "Repulsion" (which Aronofsky says was his major influence) and "The Tenant," De Palma's "Carrie," Aronofsky's own movies -- and, of course, "The Red Shoes." All overtly referenced in "Black Swan," one way or another.
I've always loved the veil scenes in "Scarlet Empress" (despite being a fairly mediocre movie in terms of plot/story) -- but my I think my favorite close up has to be Krzysztof Kieślowski zooming into the eye of Juliette Binoche in "Bleu" -- close to the beginning of the film, when she's laying down in the hospital bed after coming to the realization her entire family has died in the car crash that injured her. Heartbreaking scene.
Whilst I agree with the point that maybe Aronosky doesnt make the references to those other films his own, I do think Tarintino is a poor choice of someone who does this well. Thats not to say im not a fan, but sometimes his films annoy me with their constant "hey look at what films I've watched!"
Its something that can divorce me from the wonderful worlds and characters he creates. Whilst Aronosky is no more subtle, I find it less irritating.
I agree with Karim Drissi’s observation that Aronofsky’s “Black Swan” has Dario Argento bloody black gloves all over it – but without Argento’s screwy Italian wit. Argento, like DePalma and other 70’s grindmasters, knows how to emulate Hitchcock through the lens of an unencumbered subconscious, but Aronofsky is too much of a third-generation fan-boy formalist to make the movie entertaining. He waffles, I felt, with stabbing close-ups of the actors to create intimacy, while kicking the tension to the curb with ridiculous CGI and plodding sexual hyperbole. What I felt was truly demeaning to the audience is the underlying assumption on the director’s and the studio’s part that “Black Swan” should be marketed to the “art-house” crowd, most of whom were teenagers who did not show up to the Grand’s (in Tacoma, WA) empty showing of “Suspiria”. Ultimately, “Black Swan”, for me, is BAD Argento that has been toned down for the middle: a little risqué, a little violent, a little hallucinogenic, but without the passion. I suggest we give the movie to Ken Russell to re-cut, and hope for something entertainingly pornographic, in spirit at least.
I agree with all of your criticisms of Black Swan, but I wanna say, I think the words "unencumbered subconscious" are a tad romantic, at least if you're referring to Argento or De Palma's subconscious. If you're referring to the approach they're (consciously) taking to their movies, then I think I get it.
About the "stalker Cam": I understand it consists of keeping the camera behind the character and following him/her so that we can see the back of his/her neck (correct me if I am wrong). I think the best examples of this kind of shooting are to be found in the Dardenne brothers' "Le fils" starring Olivier Gourmet. In this case they probably want us to look at things as if we were the main character.
What did any of you make of the scene where Hershey stands at her daughter's bedroom door in a black negligee and purrs, "Are you ready for me?"
Are we to understand part of our frantic Pavlova wannabe's madness stems from incestuous relations with her mother?
Did I imagine this? Or was that in there? I surely won't suffer through another viewing of this risible movie to find out.
Although I know this isn't the right place, in "No Country for Old Men" the character played by Brolin DOES NOT GO BACK TO GIVE THE DYING MEXICAN WATER. Instead he goes back to take possession of those nice, neat stacked up bricks of 'coke' or whatever back of the truck.
Ebert once wrote regarding "Au Hazard Balthazar" -- the donkey went to die of old age amongst the sheep. Balthaza, as was shown us, died of a fatal bullet wound, stumbled wearily upon a herd of sheep and, Christ-like, died there.
Maybe Portland's "mother" Hershey wasn't exactly purring, but she sure as hell wore a black negligee and she certainly did ask, "Are you ready for me?"
What I mean by all this disjointed rambling is --when one pretends to write about a movie, well, one should bloody well make sure to have actually seen it.
Many thanks.
b
Everybody left long ago, yet till I want to explain my Brolin character "brings water to the Mexican" comment. Brolin knows the Mex died hours ago. As a Vietnam vet, he knows such a massive stomach wound means a slow, but not too slow, painful death.
The water is his justifation and his excuse. It's his conscience balm and possible fair defense ... just in case. If you meant to bring water to a dying man would you waste any time ie. put the jug down yards away from him, take a careful look around etc.
He took the money, he took the guns...what occurred to him was he did not take the drugs. Those neatly stacked and packed drugs. He wanted the whole package.
Leave a comment