Characterization

[akashiver]

I finally saw The Kids Are All Right  -- that's 9/10 Oscar movies down! -- and I was disappointed. The performances were strong, but the screenplay needed more work. I was particularly studying Annette Bening's performance because she's many critics' favorite as Best Actress and... I'm still rooting for Natalie Portman. I was trying to figure out why afterwards, and I realized that part of my reaction had to do with writing issues.

In Black Swan, Portman plays a simple but fully-realized character, and she brings that character to life. In The Kids Are All Right, Bening is playing a caricature for most of the film. She gets one scene in the movie where the script finally gives her character behaviors that don't  "advance the plot" -- and that too is meant to advance the plot, by showing a pov character that Bening's character is more than two-dimensional. But then we're back to two dimensions again. Bening does the best she can to create a vivid character, but she's hampered by the script.

I've read a lot of analyses of these two movies that reverse my analysis. Many critics have major issues with Black Swan: the misogyny of its plotline annoys them. They claim horror movies don't require "real acting" because "all you have to do is look scared all the time." Lastly they sneer at Nina's character because she's so archetyically a "little girl lost." 
The first criticism is overstated, and doesn't actually comment on the effectiveness of the film. The second isn't worth responding to. The third is interesting.

Yes, Nina's character is based in archetype. That's not a bad thing, particularly in a world that's ruled by archetypes, in which the character is explicitly told to step into the respective roles of virgin and whore. We get hints of particularity -- the character's alienation from her classmates, her thieving -- but as with all the characters, we are told very little about her. We have to be shown everything. All the little details -- the gamut of expressions that cross Portman's face -- build the character. To state the obvious: the actress has more visible work to do.

In TKAAR, the writers seem to confuse detail with characterization. We know that Bening's character is a wine-lover, that she likes male gay porn, that she met her lover when she was a resident, that she does x of this kind of operations and uses micro-surgery, that she thinks the organic movement is a bit woo-woo, that she hates motorcycles, that she's uptight and a perfectionist (the characters helpfully tell us this), that ...

There are a lot of details here. But for much of the movie we see her character do three things: nag, criticize, and make brief, absent-minded loving gestures. The first two are meant to drive her partner away, the last to help the audience understand why her partner stays with her. There are no loose threads, no details that aren't intended to move the plot forward (even the gay porn detail is included for plot reasons). There's also nothing that complicates the two-dimensional portrait of this woman as a loving but hypercritical "husband."

In Black Swan, on the other hand, scenes do more than one thing. The scene with the cake, for example: talk to some audience members and they see it as a scene revealing the character's anorexia; others see it as a film about the mother's controlling nature; others about the daughter's repressed desire to rebel; others about the mother's desire to punish the daughter for the success she didn't have... We're witness to fucked-up behavior, and it isn't clear how we are immediately supposed to interpret it.

Immediately before I saw TKAAR, I read an article about Tolkien's use of detail that argued that, while literary critics tend to love elaborate description,  Tolkiens's avoidance of particularizing detail is more effective at getting the reader to immerse in the fictional world. I think in the case of these two films, the same is true of character. I believed more in the character I was told less about.
 

Comments

[rcloenen-ruiz.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen both of these movies, but your thoughts on them make me want to check them out.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I don't even think it's fair to Black Swan to say she's told to step into the roles of virgin and whore, because I think the movie's attitude toward sexuality doesn't fall into the usual value judgments that dichotomy implies. Nina may think sexuality is bad, but I don't think the film does; peering around the edges of Nina's point of view, it looks like the "whore" character is happy and well-balanced, at peace with her sexuality and in control of what she does with it. The "virgin" character, on the other hand, is anything but balanced; having repressed those impulses practically out of sight, she's at the mercy of those around her, and her own rebellion against control. Even Leroy's exploitation of her isn't the exploitation I expected it to be: he doesn't seem to be interested in her sexually, only artistically, and sex is a tool for that, just like the mirrors in the studio are. He's trying to show her something she can't otherwise see.

And I really don't agree with that NYT article. It's hard to separate the protagonist's attitudes from those of the story, but I don't think Nina's loves are illicit, or that the movie says "a woman’s truest fulfillment is as (heterosexual) lover, wife and mother, and therefore that Nina’s best artistic successes can never compensate for her personal sacrifices" -- I think it's out to show that Nina's own thinking on those matters is twisted, that she sees her own loves as illicit, and that she has no idea how to balance artistic success with those other sacrifices. To try and be non-spoilery for those who may be reading these comments . . . I'd say the sense I was left with at the end of the movie was, being both extremes at once is destructive, or at least Nina's path to achieving it was. (Could Lily have danced the White Swan well? We never really find out.)

Anyway, I agree that Portman's performance is a good one. Haven't seen the other movie, but dismissing Portman as just "looking scared all the time" is a gross mis-judgment of her work.

[akashiver.livejournal.com]

>>a woman’s truest fulfillment is as (heterosexual) lover, wife and mother, and therefore that Nina’s best artistic successes can never compensate for her personal sacrifices"<<

I was irritated by that sentence. Where exactly in the film do we get to see fulfilled women as lovers, wives and mothers? Our one example of motherhood doesn't exactly call out for emulation.