Are wrestlers the performative flipside of ballet dancers? One man seems to think so!
Darren Aronofsky’s compelling new chiller BLACK SWAN opens the 2010 Venice Film festivities in a couple days, so it’s not all that surprising dude’s opening his yap about the project. Not that we mind, BLACK SWAN is easily one of our most anticipated end-of-year genre flicks, so the more we hear beforehand (sans spoilers) the better. Read below what the director told MTV about his 5th feature film…
“They (ballet and wrestling) are really connected and people will see the connections. It’s funny, because wrestling some consider the lowest art — if they would even call it art — and ballet some people consider the highest art. But what was amazing to me was how similar the performers in both of these worlds are. They both make incredible use of their bodies to express themselves…I’ve always considered the two films companion pieces.”
Interesting. And I definitely see the analogy to high and low culture. But even more fascinating is how BLACK SWAN and THE WRESTLER sort of germinated as one film, originally:
“At one point, way before I made ‘The Wrestler,’ I was actually developing a project that was about a love affair between a ballet dancer and a wrestler, and then it kind of split off into two movies,” he said. “So I guess my dream is that some art theater will play the films as a double feature some day…I realized pretty quickly that taking two worlds like wrestling and ballet was much too much for one movie.”
Touche sir. And although the thought of bringing Evan Rachel Wood and Marissa Tomei together with Portman, Kunis and Ryder is more than my meager brain can compute…I actually tend to agree with Aronofsky’s assessment. Truthfully.
Finishing up, Aronofsky lauded his leading lady, who apparently had been talking with the director about BLACK SWAN for a decade or so:
“We were in Times Square and had a coffee at the old Howard Johnson. I had this idea of setting something in the ballet world. It was very loose. I didn’t have a script. And then I found out she was fascinated by ballet and wanted to play a dancer.”
“One of the best things about the film is the casting of Natalie,” he explained. “She took the part and ran with it. I don’t know if when I was working with the writers we were consciously channeling Natalie or Natalie somehow transformed herself to the part, but they grew together.”
BLACK SWAN goes wide December 1st.
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