Both stories feature a troubled protagonist who is put under pressure in a performative career, both have thematic concerns about the fracturing and/or loss of identity, and in both stories, the protagonists’ major spiral is kicked off by a sexual awakening of sorts. Black Swan itself contains numerous similarities, both in narrative and style, to Perfect Blue, though Aronofsky has denied that it was an influence. Back in 2010, a certain segment of anime fandom was abuzz with arguments over whether Black Swan was a rip-off of Satoshi Kon’s 1997 film Perfect Blue – think the Battle Royale/Hunger Games debate, but for the Very Serious Art Film crowd. It really enjoyed the quiet, atmospheric, ominous, creeping dread feel of the film and would like to find something similar. Black Swan is a fantastic film that’s brilliantly put together and features fantastic performances. Where Black Swan has the heroine's paranoia express itself through a wall of photos start chattering unintelligibly and overwhelming her, Perfect Blue has inexplicably dead fish, screaming into a bathtub, and the belief that she may be a moonlighting as a murderer in a manner directly reflecting her tv character, which very well may be reality while the pop idol plot is the fantasy. True, while I fully respect and enjoy Aronofsky's film, Satoshi's Perfect Blue presents a consistent one-upping, a steady complication, expansion, and visual and thematic elevation, of the same formula. That said, and it’s the point of this discussion, I feel it owes most of its success to Perfect Blue. In both movies, the young, innocent protagonist has just moved on to a more demanding job (dramatic actress/lead dancer), and the pressure turns her apeshit. Perfect Blue is about a pop singer instead of a ballet dancer, but other than that, Black Swan could pass for its American remake. I didn't get my first iPhone until I was right about to enter high school, but what I did have was a little, blue iPod shuffle. The fact that we first met as friends in 2017 helped. Similarly, American live action film Black Swan showcases the struggles of emerging dancer Nina as she deals with the stresses associated with being the lead in her company's production of Swan Lake. Had he lived, who knows what further impact he might have made. It doesn't have to be an anime film just something with a similar tone. Learn how your comment data is processed. Mima has an overbearing but loving maternal figure (her manager, Rumi) who doesn’t approve of her new shady career choices. Is Aronofsky part of an elaborate scheme to steal Japanese media and profit off of it at the expense of clueless American audiences, in the same vein as Inception and The Matrix? Pingback: Why do people keep copying Satoshi Kon? Until then, it's a simple case of inspiration, Aronofsky having stated before that he deeply admired Satoshi's work, and frankly there's a far more important question for critics to be considering when they weigh in the two films: You might think from the article title that you have my personal opinion pinned. In Black Swan the issue is very much that Nina has had to repress her own sexuality, or perhaps not “had to” but the fact is that it has been. It centers on a performance by Natalie Portman that is nothing short of heroic, and mirrors the conflict of good and evil in Tchaikovsky's ballet “Swan Lake.” It is one thing to lose yourself in your art. In Perfect Blue, Mima wakes up in a horrifying identical replica of her room only to be greeted by her trusted manager, Rumi, who is dressed in the garb of Mima the pop idol and looks identical to the heroine, her true form only visible through a mirror. With Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel, Winona Ryder. She rises and physically engages with Nina, demanding that she be given the spotlight, and the lead shoves the advancing woman into a mirror, after which she turns into the Black Swan version of Nina and lays helplessly for a moment, seemingly defeated. Her delusions start manifesting themselves more and more definitively until even she is unaware of what’s real. In writing those two different plot summaries, I see how it would be easy to dismiss it and say “no, of course they’re not.” They seem similar, but I maintain in execution, Aronofsky was adapting the former work. There’s the additional problem of Nina’s mother, a stern and overbearing stage mother who is definitely living out her own failed ambitions through Nina, and has locked Nina in a state of childlike naivety, which is at odds with the young woman’s repressed sexual desires. To all the armchair film critics out there: Yes, we can all see how Aronofsky used his rights to the film to copy the bathtub scene. The two films appeal on a subconscious level – I think they hit the part of our mind that makes us sometimes feel like things are a bit beyond our control, that we’re soldiering through but only just holding it all together. Who am I to fault Aronofsky when he is simply using a climax different from the standard chase and fight scene? When filming Requiem for a Dream, he saw Perfect Blue and wanted to recreate one of its scenes, and to do this, purchased the film rights to Perfect Blue so he could recreate the scene exactly. Post was not sent - check your email addresses! Remember when you were in middle school and your parents got you your first iPod touch for Christmas, and now you had a way to text your friends as well as some access to the internet? Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. I had a very limited song selection on this tiny iPod, most of which were show tunes. This furthers the shame and embarrassment she clearly feels about matters of sex, which conflict with her inner desires to become a sexual being, as evidenced by the Black Swan character emerging soon after, almost literally (as much as Nina’s delusions can be literal) with her body transforming into that of a black swan. The list goes on. Where Black Swan has an imagined sex scene and the heroine stabbing herself in a delusional mania, Perfect Blue has the filming of a murder-investigation police procedural blend with Mima's and our own concept of reality when her character is raped and convicted of murder by way of insanity. However, as the pressure mounts on this perfect prima dona, not to mention the insistence of her choreographer to be more sensual, and a new talented rival, her world begins to turn upside down in an insane asylum sort of way. Directed by Satoshi Kon. When Black Swan was released, I’d seen nothing in the way of trailers or promotional material, save for the awesome poster atop this review and precisely one review of the film that liked it well enough. These desires come to the fore when the ballet’s director tells Nina she needs to find her sexuality in order to tap in to the character of the Black Swan. I went to see it, keen to take in Aronofsky’s newest, and by the end of the film, was impressed but completely hooked on one question – had he actually remade Perfect Blue? To tackle this more fairly, we cannot look at the works scene by scene, but judge things more abstractly. Yet ultimately, these accusations will remain dead in the water until such a time that Aronofsky suffers a sudden crisis of conscience and confesses to the entire conspiracy, or someone snuffs out a secret dossier detailing the entire plan. It’s here that the major thematic variation occurs. Depending on which corners of the internet you happen to frequent, Black Swan is either a brilliant extrapolation of the themes explored in Perfect Blue, or a brazen bit of theft. In fact, although Aronofsky denies that it was an influence on his visceral 2010 hit, after watching the two it’s kind of hard to believe him, especially considering the rumours… Darren Aronofsky's “Black Swan” is a full-bore melodrama, told with passionate intensity, gloriously and darkly absurd. level 2 You can find out more about commissions here. This is "KINO presents: Under the Influence | Perfect Blue & Black Swan" by KINO Rotterdam on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people… There are many parallels between this film and the American movie, Black Swan (2010) starring Natalie Portman.For example: The main character in this film is named Mima. Mima’s also haunted by visions of her former popstar image, threatening to take back what’s hers. My quarantine mood depended on the hilarious sitcom and lighthearted one-liners. Not necessarily to tell the same story, but imagine he’s taken apart a Lego house to piece together one of his own using the same bricks. In Black Swan, the protagonist is Nina, a meek ballerina who is embarking on her first starring role after many years of being overlooked by the company she works for. Many have claimed that the Black Swan was a rip-off of Perfect Blue.Both have different stories with similar situations. Black Swan trailer (Perfect Blue) Superdude1999. Almost definitely. I don't know if it's the happiness from all of my family's favorite holiday treats being made or just the thought of this year coming to an end, but what I do know is that the music makes it all the better. Radhi, SUNY Stony Brook3. Playing next. He has literally remade the film. Nice catch. Again, there is practically no objectivity in the debate of film; however, which version clearly seems to be the more nuanced, complex, and engaging of the two? With Junko Iwao, Rica Matsumoto, Shinpachi Tsuji, Masaaki Ôkura. In Black Swan, Nina imagines that she stumbles backstage straight into the hands of her rival, a fellow dancer second in the running for the lead role in "Swan Lake." It's not as if everyone who has seen or even read an article about both films noticed the bathtub scenes. And one of the biggest silver linings that this year has given me is none other than Miss Taylor Alison Swift. It could be true that he wasn't thinking of Perfect Blue when he was conceiving Black Swan, but directors like Satoshi Kon and Shinya Tsukamoto are his influences as a filmmaker in general, so their stylistic flourishes show up in his work. Consider the climactic confrontation between the lead heroines and their antagonistic alter egos. (Or Black Swan ) Discussion. Brittany Morgan, National Writer's Society2. Perfect Blue doesn’t follow the exact same plot as Black Swan but there are striking similarities. Tellingly, the first time Nina even tries to explore her sexuality by masturbating, she discovers (apparently immediately before the moment of orgasm too, as implied by the film) that her mother is asleep in the chair next to her bed. Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com. Follow. It was, however, a project Aronofsky went on to direct almost a decade later that bore closest resemblance to Perfect Blue. At this point, almost a decade after the completion of Aronofsky's film and more than two decades after Satoshi's, it has devolved into little more than an echo chamber of the same conjectures. This time of year brings something out in me. Black Swan is owned by Fox Searchlight. But rather than creating an outright retelling of the same story, Aronofsky has taken the elements from Perfect Blue that translate so well and crafted his own story around them. Report. Who, then, in the absence of an exact measurement for which is "better," portrays this descent most interestingly and with more nuance? Aronofsky used some of its imagery for 2000’s Requiem for a Dream but 2010’s Black Swan is where his … Without Perfect Blue, Aronofsky's Black Swan would look totally different. New viewers of Perfect Blue are often left wondering why it was made as an anime, given that beyond the mere animation itself, it doesn’t observe any of the usual tropes or conventions of anime. Not only do the two stories match up against so many similar themes and concepts, their actual approach and method are the same, leading me to once again stake the claim that Black Swan is, while not a carbon-copy, absolutely a remake of Perfect Blue. From stocking stuffers to eight days of Hannukah gifts to everything in between, here are 17 gifts to give the "Schitt's Creek" diehard: For those of you who need a reminder of how great music was in the early 2010's. One is the story of how an ambitious and naive ballerina tumbles into delusion, violence, and the perversion of her own identity as she struggles to play the role of her dreams. Those plans never came to … The fight is concluded in barely over a minute and the final dance, the signature moment of the film, begins shortly after. Score: 16/20. Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan, which follows a ballerina’s aspirations for greatness and her downward spiral, is one such film. Then again, perhaps it is unfair to judge the films by these confrontations; after all, isn't the true climax of Aronofsky's Black Swan the stunning ballet that comes after the brief fight? Of its success to Perfect Blue plot as Black Swan, which follows a ballerina’s for! 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