Black Swan ****
7pm @ Paramount (Austin Film Festival)
Holy shit…no, no. Holy fuck! Yeah that’s better. That was my initial reaction. Initial. It means first, but not necessarily accurate. Still, that first reaction doesn’t lie. Holy anything doesn’t befit what I experienced. And I say experienced instead of watched because watched diminishes Darren’s Aronofsky’s Black Swan, as if it was just another great film, just another masterpiece…which it is, but again, those aren’t words enough. It was, in a word, perfect.
Trite critic-words like riveting, gut-wrenching, powerful and my favorite, a roller coaster ride come to mind…And they all work too, but again…not good enough. My heart was racing…no, no that’s cliché too. Fuck it. My heart was still racing about ½ hour later, maybe even an hour later. I checked my pulse for crying out loud. Literally placed my finger on my vein up there and made sure the thing was cool. I was sweating a little. I was unsure how to explain myself, my emotions, the way my body was acting. It felt like when I walk down the planks after a roller coaster ride. Like holy shit, holy fuck, that was fucking awesome. What was that? Can I do it again? No, no, not right now that I might have a heart attack. Give me a few minutes, an hour maybe. Let me chill. Figure exactly what just happened. And then once, you calm down, come back to earth, the butterflies fluttering, you realize, there’s no repeating that initial feeling. It just doesn’t happen every day.
