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Wow! [pant…pant…pant] Whew!

This was all I could say and do when the end cred­its began to roll on Black Swan. My wife and I were, lit­er­ally, exhausted. In case  you’re won­der­ing, that’s a good thing. Given that the movie is just in its third week of release, I’ll use this post as a place holder until it’s safe to dis­cuss the movie with­out spoil­ing it for those plan­ning to see it in the­aters. (Don’t worry…I’ll give fair warn­ing for the Netflix/DVD rental crowd.)

If, by chance, you imme­di­ately waived off Black Swan because you thought it was a bal­let movie…think again. This movie is a beau­ti­fully writ­ten and acted story of obses­sion, neu­ro­sis. stage moth­ers, para­noia, repressed sex­u­al­ity and schiz­o­phre­nia.  I’m sure that I’m leav­ing out some other apt descrip­tion, but hope­fully you get the idea. I’ve already seen or read an anal­ogy to Fight Club. That’s actu­ally a pretty fair com­par­i­son, if you add in a “I gave up my dream when I had you” obses­sive mother. Think Fight Club meets Mommy Dear­est — with a lit­tle bit of Ses­sion 9 thrown in for good mea­sure. You will find your­self fre­quently try­ing to sort out what is, and what is not, real. Much like Memento, I walked away from the movie with more ques­tions about the story than I did when it began. All the actors did a great job, but Natalie Portman’s per­for­mance is def­i­nitely wor­thy of Oscar discussion.

I think that I’ll leave it here for now. I’ll come back to this post in a cou­ple of weeks to pro­vide some more thoughts, and prob­a­bly pose some ques­tions. I will say this much; if you are eas­ily spooked, you might want to see this movie dur­ing the day so you can walk to your car in the light. Oth­er­wise, see it with a group of friends that will not give you a hard time for fre­quently shift­ing in your seat and breath­ing heavily.

If you’ve seen the movie, please respect other read­ers who have not, and refrain from post­ing any spoil­ers in your com­ments. If you’d like to dis­cuss, feel free to email me at mdl@matthewdlyons.com or give me a call.