Black Swan. No doubts. The Wrestler is… inconsistent. Aronofsky is a very talented guy, but he have to learn some things before become a really great director.
I like both quite a bit but Black Swan’s is it or isn’t it a hallucination thing started to be a tad repetitive for me at the end. The Wrestler was magic.
Aronofsky flaming starts in 3…2…1…
hehehe… Fail, Machiko… fail….
They do have very similar stories, but I definitely prefer Black Swan. The Wrestler’s script was very weak and only Mickey Rourke saves it from going into TV movie territory at times. Black Swan I feel has a lot more going for it and the horror elements take some of the pressure off the story. I think it’s Aronofsky’s best film yet.
I haven’t seen The Wrestler, but I vote Black Swan. She’ll cut a bitch!
I didn’t like the ending from The Wrestler, I perfer Black Swan. It just had more of a put together “feel” for me then The Wrestler. I was left thinking “What now?” when I saw The Wrestler. Though they are both pretty good films all in all. I just feel like Black Swan didn’t make me feel like I had watched a half finshed story, I was lefted wanting more from The Wrestler, either by him getting better, falling in love, changing (etc) or by dying and self destructing (etc) what ever the turn out may be. But I guess it was more realistic with its ending, but I just felt that Black Swan was better and interesting for me to watch, it grabbed me from the start with the dancing and beauty etc… Who knows?
I agree with Patricia. I vote Black Swan.
Re: Wrestler— Spoiler ahead… When I saw the great “working at the deli counter” scene (the first one) I thought “I hope the movie has the guts to have this guy NOT return to the ring” That would have been far more interesting- and it would have been a wiser film, I believe. It also would have been very difficult to write.
while i didn’t think The Wrestler was great, i liked it far better than Black Swan.
There were too many moments in the Black Swan that were unintentionally funny to me. Mila Kunis’ character seemed silly and too cookie-cutter “bad girl” for my taste and Portman’s character just was a bit over the top and melodramatic.
Some of the dance sequences were very well shot, but that is about all i took from that movie.
now Requiem for a Dream…..Aronofsky has yet to equal that one.
Black Swan, without any doubt. The Wrestler was good but – JOHNNYD is right – Mickey Rourke does almost everything. Well, here we have Natalie Portman, but there’s also a great cure for the details, everything is more refined and in its right place…while I was watching it my thoughts were going from the last Cronenberg stuff to movies like Haneke’s Piano Player, in a polanskian mood. And the use of the sound – like in Requiem For A Dream – is great.
I think that the wrestler simply worked better than Black Swan. The wrestler was shot in somewhat of a documentary style manner, and this allowed for a wide range of shots to “fit in” with the type of cinematography. However, like ballet, the shooting style in Black Swan demands a higher level of strictness, and during the non-Black Swan scenes, there are some shots, even some sections of the film, that do not blend all that well. I also thought that in Black Swan, we weren’t really feeling the main character’s progressive psychosis, but rather, we were merely observing it. In the wrestler, I felt the slightly claustrophobic sense of being trapped in a tough situation and trying to get out.
So yeah, I liked Black Swan, but I definitely prefer The Wrestler.
I also thought the black bird man hallucination was over used. The first scene of the movie was kind of like, “Holy shit! It’s the Creeper (Jeepers Creepers) with feathers!!! What the hell?” but by the near end of the film (and especially during the backstage appearance) we had all been desensitized to his image. I was also disappointed that the black bird man was one of the only hallucinations the film could rely on during the ballet dancing.
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I only just got to see Black Swan and as a dancer myself plus an admirer of Aranofsky was curious and excited.
However I have to say that whilst I did enjoy this film and was (as expected) suitably unnerved at the end I did find it somewhat clichéd and not a patch on the honesty of The Wrestler which I have to say still goes down in my book as one of the best and most memorable films of all time. Whether that is down to Rourke or Aranofsky it it is impossible to say. Sometimes a collaboration of ideas and meeting of minds will create something great… Rourke in my opinion, whilst he may be a screw up in some areas of his life is no doubt a highly creative, talented and expressive actor and this role just brought out the best in him!!
Black Swan for me was a little bit clichéd (think the ‘ballet’ mom living vicariously through her daughter, the passionate director and the conflict between frigidity and passion…) and whilst Natalie Portman did a great job at portraying a dancer (which she is not), I feel that crazy/psychotic young girls/women in films are not that original nor particularly difficult characters to portray. Therefore I think the acclaim for her role in this is vastly overrated.
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The Wrestler -not bad
Black Swan – as bad as they come
Definitely The Wrestler for me. Black Swan didn’t resonate with me emotionally, beyond making me feel kind of tense (and I don’t think it aimed to?). I remember getting a little teary-eyed during one of my viewings of The Wrestler, it’s more impactful, to me. Black Swan’s more of a fun horror/B-movie.
The Wrestler, easily.
The Wrestler. It’s a decent film. The premise of Black Swan had potential but it was executed very poorly (Portman’s performance aside). Overall i’ve been underwhelmed by Aronofsky’s work. Its so contrived, cold and soulless.
I’m a fan of both films (give both five stars) and I feel like they are brilliant companion pieces. Both execute the shared premise of artists-going-crazy-for-their-art on opposite sides of.. well.. everything. Male, female. Violent, elegant. Both are singed with the impending dread of loss-of-identity and are filmed so similarly yet one stays grounded and the other frantic. Love them both.
The Wrestler is just Arronofsky’s take on one of those Rocky-Athelet-going-for-the-championshipt type-of-films. A very tired genre if you ask me, maybe a rehersal for Black Swan
Black Swan is his take on a fairy tale, so I don’t mind the one dimensional characters or the fantasy. I think it is one of his best along with Pi and Requiem for a Dream. A total mind trip that casts a spell on you from the beginning and never lets you go until that last moment of impossible grace.
I honestly loved both Black Swan and The Wrestler. I think I liked Black Swan a little bit more, but I think that is because I’ve always been more of a fan of psychological thrillers over sports movies. But I think I enjoyed The Wrestler because it wasn’t really like most wrestling movies.
A lot of people complain that Aronofsky wasn’t being as original as he should’ve been with the story arcs of Black Swan and The Wrestler, but I don’t hold that against him, because he didn’t write Black Swan, based on my memory.
If I only had the two to choose from, I’d say The Wrestler, as it really resonated with me. Black Swan was technically adventurous but really lacking an emotional touch.
If I could choose any Aronofsky, I’d say he hasn’t topped both Pi and Requiem For a Dream.
I’m sorry to intrude on this thread. Rather than just crap all over Aronofsky and his fans, I’d just like to suggest a dissenting view as food for thought since I’m surprised not to note any such voices up to this point.
Aronofsky is a highly-skilled stylist. A mild provocateur. But ultimately his films are like sugar-saturated carbonated drinks: a temporary blast that leaves you empty.
I was going to compare him to a music video director but that is not fair to his ability to successfully weave diverse narrative strands into a coherent and cohesive whole a la RfaD. Yet I still can’t shake the sense that he loves the thrill of a shocking jump-cut and the payoff of a singularly disturbing image more than actual emotional depth.
He has a tremendous eye for naturalistic detail: surely The Wrestler’s greatest virtue is in its depiction of the backstage milieu of these broken performers. But Aronofsky’s films are only detailed and realistic on the surface. Underneath they rely on shallow emotional cliches and simplistic motivations. Randy wants to do it for the fans. He wants to be a good dad but he screwed it up forever by missing that appointment. Of course, Marisa Tomei falls for him. They went shopping for a second-hand jacket together! And heart condition be damned, the show must go on! Sure, there’s been countless films that worked with similar material, but none that took themselves so seriously or tried so hard to convince us of their authenticity while selling us a movie of the week. No thank you, I’ll take Avildsen’s low budget, uninspired Rocky with its complex characters and emotional resonance any day.
If you strip away the glitzy camerawork, the visceral editing, the detailed mise-en-scene and his great performers, his core stories are sophomoric and laughable. Requiem is simply a visual roller coaster ride. The X-Games of depravity played out on film. The Ellen Burstyn and Jennifer Connolly storylines in particular are exploitative, sensational and point to his utter lack of sympathy or understanding of women except as interesting visual objects of contemplation.
I haven’t seen Black Swan but from what i know of Aronofsky and what I’ve heard of the film’s plot, it’s not surprising that the film revolves around jealousy and hysteria instead of, say, artistic ambition or transcendence. But because of his ability to represent the “gritty reality” of his chosen subjects, he is usually given a pass for his shabby emotional cores.
Yet, even among the previous posters, there seems to be a good deal of dissent between which of his film’s was most emotionally resonant. Does that speak to my contention that it’s easy to be fooled by his flashy visuals, but easy to be disenchanted once the Emperor is revealed?
Comments, counter-arguments and witty abuse welcome.
Aronofsky’s films don’t really seem “empty,” to me, at least. I think his emptiest one was probably Black Swan, because you don’t really… get anything out of it except entertainment. Don’t get me wrong, though, I love Black Swan. You don’t really get much out of Pi, either, but I still love that movie. I think Requiem’s intention was to deliver a message that not all people receive, which is why not everybody likes it. And The Fountain has stuck with me ever since I saw it.
Or maybe I’m wrong, and Black Swan and Pi also tried to deliver a message that I just didn’t receive. That is possible too, I suppose.
After watching it I would have said Black Swan, but a few months after, The Wrestler holds up a lot better than Black Swan.
@Dave Kang
Randy didn’t just want to do it for the fans. He wanted to do it because he has nothing else in his life he can get right. He self-sabotages all his relationships, at any other job he takes the servant role and deals with constant complaining and disrespect. In the wrestling ring he’s in command, and he’s loved. “I only get hurt out there.” He didn’t want to live a long life where the glory of his performance years gradually faded from memory, he wanted to die a wrestler, even if it meant dying soon.
Black Swan, that one is kind of empty. The plot is like a laundry list of art film cliches. Repulsion meets The Red Shoes, characters that are counterculture stereotypes.
I like Requiem For A Dream, but I couldn’t get into Pi at all. Aronofsky films suffer from trying too hard to look superficially like an art film, sometimes forgetting to have core artistic meaning. Pi is a prime example of this.
@Jirin
I think we’re in agreement. When I say he’s “doing it for the fans” or “the show must go on,” I mean pretty much what you said about the dichotomy of his worlds and his incentive to sacrifice himself.
I think only our reactions were different. Perhaps you found this tragic or ennobling? I found it hackneyed and preposterous. That said, Rourke’s performance makes me wish I felt differently. And what a waste of Marisa Tomei (well, except for, you know…)!
If anyone has seen the documentary Beyond the Mat, maybe they would appreciate what the The Wrestler has to offer a little more. I think in both films the theme of obsession is portrayed well, but in The Wrestler it was something that Robin had to do and something that he ultimately wanted to do, whereas in Black Swan it seemed more about pride and something that Nina didn’t necessarily want. While both films are similar in theme, stylistically and emotionally they are completely different. The Wrestler is much more emotionally resonant than Black Swan. Like someone mentioned earlier, Mila Kunis’ character was a cookie-cutter bad girl type and too many things were unintentionally funny that it really took me out of the movie. I feel like I had seen everything in Black Swan before and had seen it done better. I feel like I’m retreading, but Black Swan ultimately felt empty by the time it was done.
Jake Cruickshank
Both good movies, very similar. I prefer The Wrestler and my girlfriend prefers Black Swan, which do you prefer?