203: unintentional spoiler alert

Finally saw Black Swan after last week’s infinite-queue debacle.  First things first, the film was brilliant, but I’m not gonna talk too much about it here because the internet people are not keen on spoilers.  I was expecting it to be pretty similar to The Wrestler (to which it is a sort of conceptual sequel, or companion film), but in some ways it was almost identical.  They both include drawn-out shots of the titular character walking to the venue whilst being followed by the shaky camera.  On the big screen this makes you feel a bit sick.  They both have scenes where the main character goes out for drug-fuelled fun, has a sexual encounter, and then the next day are late for a hugely important event.  Nina (the Swan) and Randy (the Ram) both suffer injuries to skin and flesh, and both vomit after performances/rehearsals.  They both... – this and that, there are loads of similarities – and the two films have exactly the same ending (a leap into death... oops, spoiler alert).

Then of course the main similarity between Black Swan and The Wrestler is they are both about physical artists whose lives are destroyed by their obsession or addiction to their respective art forms.  They destroy their bodies, their health, their sanity, and their personal relationships to be the perfect ballerina, or the same top-of-the-bill wrestling superstar they were twenty years ago.  Nina struggles to leap into the dark side to take on the role of the Black Swan, and descends into self harm and insanity.  Randy ‘the Ram’ Robinson’s ‘black swan’ is the dark world of ultraviolent hardcore wrestling which he turns to in order to pay the bills, but which directly precedes his heart attack.

Films always seem to come in trilogies now (for better or worse), which makes me speculate what might be next.  Gymnast’s lives are probably too similar to ballerinas.  Clowns are not popular anymore, so would have to be set early 20^th century-ish.  Performance artists like Chris Burden (who had himself shot in the arm as a work of art) or Vito Acconci (who lay in an art gallery wanking and telling visitors what he wanted to do to them) are not fooling anyone and would probably not be seen sympathetically.  I think two films is enough, and I hope the director doesn’t end up make a shit film to bring the number up to three.

At the start of today’s blog I said I wasn’t going to talk about Black Swan much, or give away any spoilers.  I was wrong on both counts.  Sorry; I’d better put one of those ‘spoiler warnings’ at the top.  And I’ve just thought what could possibly make an interesting end to a trilogy.  How about stand-up comedian?  They tour constantly, party hard, become alcoholics, ruin their personal lives through touring and taking the piss out of everything, become completely obsessed, give large performances, have career highs and lows...  The story was already told somewhat with Man on the Moon about Andy Kaufman, which is pretty good despite the presence of Jim Carrey.  Other comedians lives who could influence the character could be Bill Hicks, Malcolm Hardee, Kenneth Williams, Charles Hawtrey, Peter Cook, Frank Sidebottom, etc etc etc.  It would be all about taking the joke too far.  But it’s not for me to make; over to you, Darren Aronofsky.  Just give me a couple of million dollars and a credit.  Cheers. 

195: Builders, bin men, wrestlers and swans.

We’ve had builders bumbling around outside the house on and off for weeks now.  They are gradually multiplying and the frequency of their swarms is increasing.  Yesterday, as my fiancée was trying to enjoy her first day off work in about two weeks, the morning and early afternoon was a nonspecific cacophony of hammer against concrete from all around the building.  With tedious predictability, just when you thought they had finished it started up again.  Last week there were a couple of the shiftiest looking workmen you ever did see; they were knocking the lintels off the downstairs flat, shacking the whole building in the process.  Every time they needed to ask the downstairs tenants a question, they knocked on my fucking door first.  I had to tell them four times to try the other door.  Anyone that stupid is suspicious to me.

Today we were woken just before 8am by more hammering against concrete; that solid thud which you feel as building vibrations as well as hearing.  I looked out of the window to see the garden path being ripped up by a crew of high-vis’ hard-hats.  We rent a flat from a private landlord.  It’s the top floor of a semi-detatched.  The downstairs flat, and most of the other properties in the area are owned and maintained by the local council.  They also maintain the exterior of our flat so we are always getting communications that would only make sense if they were our landlords. 

One day a few months ago they came asking to measure our front door and asking me to choose a design from a scrap of paper.  I told them to ask the landlord.  Last year a couple of them came around when I was out demanding to see in the attic.  This was before the confusion about them maintaining the property was sorted out, and they basically barged their way in by intimidating my fiancée, and repeating ‘we need to look, you’re on the list’.  Nice blag if you want to go around trying to rob people in their homes.

Next week our lintels will be demolished, and then later in the month we enter a six-week period of hell.  Our building and most of the street will be surrounded in scaffolding, chimney rebuilt, new lintels and guttering, new cladding, probably a bit of accidental roof damage, and a fuck load of noise.  We got a letter through the door advising us to move around the house from room to room in a desperate and futile attempt to escape the all-pervasive racket.  Expect a few more blog posts about the noise as it gradually becomes all I can think about.

The path has been dug up for about five or six hours now, and paving slabs are piled all over the place waiting to be installed.  In a couple of hours the dark will be setting in.  The extremely thin road is almost entirely blocked by massive red and white barriers weighed down at the base with sandbags.  Tomorrow is bin day, and if those barriers aren’t moved the dustbin lorry won’t fit down the street.  Usually it can only just squeeze through, as long as cars are only parked on one side and they are right up on the pavement so far that prams can’t get through.

This counts as excitement.  Bin men and builders.  I am a curtain twitching old granny, watching some youths defacing a ‘this is a neighbourhood watch area’ sign and not doing a thing to prevent it.  I am a reclusive ‘what’s he building in there?’ type; the scary house – mysterious parcels from Transylvania and Malaysia go in; nothing comes out.  I conduct sinister experiments from behind closed curtains, and a strange impenetrable rain cloud hangs perpetually over the house.

Indeed.  Ok, time for some proper writing, and a cup of tea.  Going to the cinema later to watch Black Swan.  I’ve heard great things about it, plus my fiancée loves dancing, and I love the film The Wrestler by the same director (Darren Aronofsky).  Plus it stars nerd pin-up Natalie Portman (multi-lingual, atheist, science geek; what’s not to like?).  Plus Aronofsky has this to say about it: "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."  That kind of thinking is right up my street.  I can’t wait.