The movie "Black Swan" is like the tiptoe of a ballet dancer, with a bright appearance but a lot of controversy behind it.
The first layer of controversy about Black Swan is the same as the conflict between the protagonist and the stand-in in the film.
As we all know, ballet dancers are bright on stage, and the training offstage is extremely arduous and long.
Most of them start practicing from an early age, and after years of accumulation, they can finally become professional actors.
Natalie has a lot of ballet dance moves in "Black Swan", as well as a super difficult continuous "whiplash turn".
Although she also studied ballet when she was a child, she also trained for a long time out of her own pocket before the film began, and her dedication and hard work were impeccable.
But these trainings are more about shaping the body, and it is impossible to reach the level of professional dancers in more than a year.
Natalie Portman practiced ballet
The person who broke the news to the media was Natalie's stuntman Sarah Lane in "Black Swan".
Sarah Lane is a soloist at the American Ballet Theatre (ABT), who began practicing dance at the age of 4 and won numerous awards before becoming the protagonist of one of the top ballet companies in the United States.
Seven years after the release of the film Black Swan, she was promoted to principal dancer of the theater.
Because of her strong skills and some resemblance to Natalie, she was chosen to be Natalie's main "dance substitute" in the movie "Black Swan".
Renowned ballet dancer Sarah Lane
Sarah Lane stand-in photo
Originally, the use of stand-ins in film shooting was very common, such as martial arts action, stunts, nude scenes, etc. require stand-ins.
And the stuntmen are also very aware of their own identity as tool people, and few people jump out to compete with the stars.
So why is it that only the stand-in for "Black Swan" has to come out and accuse this movie?
If you exclude the factor of deliberate hype, the biggest reason is that Natalie won the Oscar of the year with "Black Swan".
The dance scenes in Black Swan have a crushing advantage over several other candidates for best actress of the year. Both the media publicity and the audience also believe that the ballet action in the film was completed by Natalie herself, which was an important factor in her winning the Oscar for Best Actress that year.
Natalie won the 83rd Academy Award for Black Swan
Both the production company, the director, the choreographer of the film (later Natalie's husband) and Natalie herself claim that most of the dance moves in the film are done by herself, and say nothing or low-key treatment of the stuntman Sarah Lane.
Natalie thanked many people in her Oscar acceptance speech, but not for her dancer Sarah Lane.
The staff at the film's production company Fox Searchlight also greeted Sarah in advance, asking her not to give any interviews until the End of the Oscars.
Such a famous actor in the ballet industry has only left a title of "stuntman" in the film credits.
In addition, a few days before the Oscars, a video about the "head change" special effect of the heroine of "Black Swan" was suddenly blocked.
All kinds of news about the stand-in were blocked, the reason is obvious, in fact, the film side in order to impact the Oscars, so there is no room for any doubt about the film.
The first to dispute this was Wendy Peron, editor-in-chief of Dance Magazine, who wrote a blog post questioning black swan dance.
Subsequently, sarah, the stunt dancer, was also interviewed by several media outlets, including Dance Magazine, revealing her filming process as Natalie's stand-in.
Sarah Lane said that only 5% of the film's dance moves were performed by Natalie herself.
This revelation is extremely fatal to the film, equivalent to the biggest gimmick of the film and the reason for winning the Oscar is false.
According to Sarah Lane, she did all the dance moves while filming Black Swan and alternated shots with Natalie.
Natalie's footage was only close-up of her upper body and face, and sarah's parts were long-range and full-body shots, as well as leg-foot movements.
There was nothing wrong with this, but the filmmakers tried their best to cover up Sarah's contribution, which caused dissatisfaction among her and the dance professionals.
In response to this matter, the film side must be on the side of the star.
Natalie herself only responded that she had done all the action in the film, thanked Sarah Lane for her work, and refused to write an article in response as an agent.
There is also an important ballet professional in the crew, the actor who plays the prince, Benjamin Mippard.
He is also the choreographer of the film, and was previously a soloist at the New York City Ballet and choreographer and dancer at several dance agencies.
He also has another identity, that is, he became Natalie's boyfriend during the filming of "Black Swan", and later married Natalie and had two children.
Starring and choreographer of Black Swan, Natalie's later husband, Benjamin Mippard (left)
If you look at their relationship with the timing of the film's production, Natalie and Benjamin officially married in August 2012, while their first child, Alef, was born in 2011.
The Academy Awards are usually held at the end of February of each year, and at the end of February 2011, Natalie received the best actress award with a pregnant belly of about 6 months old.
The film was released in North America in December 2010, and the relationship between the two was equivalent to the entire filming period, Natalie was pregnant before the film was released, and she was pregnant before the film was unmarried and married.
Previously, Natalie had also passed on gossip with many stars in the circle, but none of them had become Natalie's destination. In the end, during the filming of "Black Swan", he developed a true relationship with his work partner and has maintained a marriage relationship to this day.
It can be seen that Natalie is passionate about this film and how deeply she is invested.
Natalie and her husband Benjamin
Although Benjamin is also a professional dancer, he has a more intimate relationship with Natalie, and is certainly on her side, much less likely to help Sarah Lane speak.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, he responded that Sarah Lane only did footwork and whiplashing, and a diagonal movement, with 85 percent of the other dance moves done by Natalie herself.
And on the set, there was also rumors of Natalie and Benjamin joining forces to suppress Sarah's gossip.
Director Darren Aronowski put forward the data, he asked the editor to count, there are 139 dance scenes in the film, of which 111 are Natalie herself, and only 28 are Sarah Lane, which is equivalent to 80% of the dance shots are Natalie herself.
Director Aronofsky admits that there are two longer dance moves in the film that do use face-swapping effects, but this only accounts for 10% of the entire dance scene.
Black Swan head-swapping effects
In summary, the controversy between the filmmakers and the stand-in Sarah Lane stems from the difference in their professional perspectives.
The film itself is an audiovisual magic trick, connecting the protagonist's face and the action body of the stand-in to form the complete dance movements we finally see.
As a professional dancer, he completed all the dance moves during the filming process and contributed his professionalism, but in the end, the credit was all erased by the film, all recorded on the star's head, and there will definitely be a great imbalance in his heart.
In addition to the double questioning, the second level of debate about "Black Swan" centers on whether this movie is a copy of Imatoshi's god work "The House of Unma".
Toshi Imatoshi's directorial debut "The House of unma"
Speaking about the inspiration for Black Swan, director Aronofsky said the idea first came from his sister practicing ballet every day at school as a child.
As early as 10 years before the release of Black Swan, the year Aronofsky's famous masterpiece "Requiem for Dreams" was released, he conceived a story about ballet dancers and stand-ins, but the script never matured.
Black Swan directed by Darren Aronofsky
Subsequently, he made two movies, "Cherish the Fountain" and "The King of Wrestling", and has been brewing the story of "Black Swan".
Aronofsky sees Black Swan as a companion piece to The King of Wrestling, because both stories tell the unknown hardships and loneliness behind an acting career.
Aronofsky also said that the script for Black Swan was influenced by Dostoevsky's novella "The Stand-In," as well as Polanski's films "The Strange Lodger" and "Cold-Blooded Horror."
The novel "Stand-in" tells the story of Yakov, a low-ranking official in St. Petersburg, who has been struggling to get ahead. One day he met a man who looked exactly like himself.
At first, Yakov and the stand-in got along as friends, which was not bad.
But this stand-in was more slippery, more sociable, and more charismatic than he was, and gradually took over Yaakov's life, eventually leading to Yaakov seeing countless of himself, insane and being imprisoned in a mental hospital.
Judging from the synopsis of the story of this novel, "Black Swan" does seem to be an adaptation of "Stand-in", but the protagonist is replaced by a ballet dancer who is eager to succeed.
However, many film experts and fans have found after watching "Black Swan" that this movie is highly similar to the debut work of the ghost animation master Imatoshi, "The House of Unma".
Both films tell the story of an actress who is driven crazy by pressure and gradually fantasizes about a stand-in.
Not only are the concepts similar, but they are also strikingly similar from the bridge design, to the storyboarding, to some of the details.
For example, the English name of Unma is Mima, and the protagonist played by Natalie in "Black Swan" is called Nina, and the name is only minus an n.
The play-in-play in "The House of the Unhemped" is called "Double Bind", and the play-in-play in "Black Swan" is "Swan Lake", which is also about the dilemma of the stand-in.
The female protagonist in "Black Swan" mainly breaks through her own personality that she can't let go, and Wei Ma is also facing a large-scale drama after transforming into an actor.
There is also the heroine in a trance, seeing her own avatar illusion in the subway reflection, and a bunch of shots of portraits moving and laughing.
"Black Swan" and "The House of the Unma" have many similar shots
There are many similarities between the two films, so I will not list them all.
But just as Nolan doesn't admit that the scene in the hotel corridor of "Inception" borrows from Imatoshi, in the face of so many similarities, Aronofsky even said that he was not affected by "The House of the Unhemp".
In fact, he had already seen "The House of unma", and he had also met with Imatoshi once.
In his famous work Requiem for Dreams, Aronofsky paid homage to a scene from The House of the Unhemped.
One of the things the two discussed when they met was that Aaron wanted to buy the rights to adapt "The House of the Unma", but the deal was not completed for various reasons.
That is to say, whether it is the one shot in "Requiem for Dreams" or the overall similarity of "Black Swan", in fact, it has not officially obtained the copyright of "Unhemp House".
Imatoshi died young in 2010, and the controversy over the creation of "Black Swan" has also become an unsolved case in film history.
I don't know if "Black Swan" is a classic in your mind?
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