i haven't seen the fountain yet. every time aronofsky releases a new film or someone brings up his catalog, i think 'i really have to get around to seeing that some day' - but that day has not come yet.
pi 4/5
requiem for a dream 4.5/5
the wrestler 4.5/5
black swan 4/5
noah 3.5/5
mother 4/5
from the films i've seen, he's six for six - all of them are good, interesting & worth the time invested. perhaps oddly, the only one i regularly revisit so far is pi, probably in part because it's the shortest (i think?), but also because i love its lo-fi punkish energy. the one i'm actually mostly interested in revisiting at the moment is noah, mainly because it was the one that left the least impression on me. i only vaguely remember a few details - rock monsters, an environmental message - while all the other films left a big imprint, even if i've only seen them once.
mother was detested by some, of course, but i liked it a lot. i can certainly go along with criticisms of its metaphorical pretensions - if you say it's an inch deep or even childish, i wouldn't hotly disagree. i think adolescent might be a perfectly apt description for it, but i don't always think being adolescent or immature is a cardinal sin. the greatest sin a movie, or anything really, can make for me is being boring, and i was never bored for a moment. in that sense, it reminds me of the adage that great and horrible art have more in common than great and average art, that to achieve greatness you have to be willing to potentially make a fool out of yourself. i don't think this is awful by any stretch of the imagination, but i do think it was silly and bombastic and ridiculous, amps turned to 11, and almost like a ken russell romp at the end, & in general i thought it was great fun.
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