Aronofsky and the physical

Hey guys,

Some new things:

1. El Bueno Y El Malo by Hermanos Gutiérrez
   

2. There's been a number of fitness-type shows. I've been watching them.
   
   If you know my work, you may know that fitness and movement have always mattered to me.
   
   It started mattering even more a few years ago, when the world coordinated to stop moving. This included my pool (where corona viruses do not easily spread) and my gym (which up until 9 months ago required masks, perhaps unaware that breathing through sweat-drenched cloth is pretty bad for you). I and a couple other gym-goers would put the mask under our chin, back up when the attendant came to tell us the rule, back down when she turned away... Just go through the motions, and all's good!
   
   With the rulemakers in charge, I needed to find my own ways to take back control. Because despite it all, I believe much is in our hands, and our choices do matter.
   
   So I studied up -- a lot -- and realized, despite my cardio skills, I was not feeding my body well. I changed my nutrition... my workouts... There are different schools of thought, but find the trusted sources, look at the reasons, at the unsupported claims, at the overlaps. There's always something more you can adjust that still fits within the parameters of enjoyment.
   
   As for the shows?
   
   Physical: 100. Even just watching the competitive games is exhausting. They look like endurance torture. Apparently there were tons of injuries, and it would've been better to show them.
   
   The Climb. It doesn't incorporate Jason Momoa very well, but you do see awe-inspiring rock-faces, and you see what's appealing about the desire to ascend and overcome.
   
   Special Forces, where so many unqualified "celebs" suffer in the face of challenges that actually have weight for real Special Forces members.
   
   Part of what's so intriguing is seeing the staff bring in the celebs -- one per episode -- for "questioning."  These sessions might as well be therapy, and you really get the sense that physical challenges aren't just for survival, but for real self-improvement, and overcoming past hangups.
   
   Limitless with Chris Hemsworth.  I agree with this: Like a contestant on The Bachelorette, Hemsworth has a hard time articulating his emotions beyond cliché. He dissembles, he weakly jokes, he “puts up walls” around his heart and mind.
   
   But stick with it through the last episode, "Acceptance," which knows a great conclusion must push further, to reverse, to extrapolate, to ascend to a new level... It attempts something elaborate and intimately uncomfortable for mainstream Disney.
   
   Of course. Darren Aronofksy is one of the series creators.
   

3. Some filmmakers instinctively know you... Or... is it it because they imprinted their craft and spirit onto you so well, that you know them?
   
   In The Whale, Aronofsky slowly zooms into the central box of an online class video-chat screen -- the black void where Brendan Fraser's instructor character has chosen to turn off his camera -- until that void fills the frame.  Later on, we see the void again, filling the screen... and I said, "The film's now going to do the reverse and zoom back out." Three seconds later, what do you know?
   
   I've gotten so much out of Aronofsky's films since first renting Pi as a teen. It made me realize how rugged and home-made something prestigious (for the time) was allowed to be.
   
   Not just that. It's the rhythms of his shot juxtapositions, and the repetitions of his motifs, mimicking the way an individual can obsessively chase an objective until it explodes... He's a lover of patterns and the way enlightened meaning can be extracted from them. Pi was a confirmation that the things I'd been curious about -- encouraged by a decently free-thinking school system -- things like spirituality and symbolic meanings and mathematical connections across time and cultural traditions -- could have enough weight to encompass an entire feature film.  Nowadays, school -- and culture at large -- talks about more "important" things.
   
   I remember the DVD commentary for this scene from Requiem for a Dream, where Aronofsky explains his motivation for starting the coverage from one side of the faces, then suddenly swings around to the other. I noted that down... It made perfect sense.  That's how you stage a scene and imbue it with meaning.
   
   Junior year of high school, two of my film friends were thinking of making their own full-length movie. That got me wanting to also, and it was because of Aronofksy that 1) I thought it could be totally feasible on virtually no money and 2) I thought it could move beyond the same ol' scenes I was seeing in most Blockbuster and library rentals and dig into something trippier and more esoteric.
   

4. The summer after senior year, I did finally shoot a sprawling feature (which I don't count as an official debut)... following one character across three different fable-like storylines, played by a different friend in each one.
   
   A couple years later, Aronofksy came out with the Fountain, with Hugh Jackman in three different time periods, playing different reincarnations of a character...
   
   I had some complaints, but it ultimately worked for me because there was a good structural shape.  (And because what he was trying to do just innately clicked)
   

5. The Wrestler was a clear attempt to get back to basics... right at a time I myself was going minimal...
   
   Aronofsky's citing of the Dardenne Brothers got me to watch their beautiful films.
   

6. Black Swan showed me how far handheld work could push into subjectivity.
   
   And the larger-than-life Tchaikovsky music was exactly my taste... I grew up on classical music, and it still influences my thinking.
   

7. Noah... the odd one out.  Reminds me why I don't often talk about Aronofksy directly as an influence, despite everything I'm pointing out now.  Sometimes there's something lacking with his dialogue work -- the subtleties of real conversation, in favor of the standard and on-the-nose.  The real observational colors are eschewed in favor of the bigger picture ones. But that does result in moments of great breadth and vision.
   

8. Despite its mixed reception, mother! played to all his strengths -- the reality doesn't have to add up... the paradox between the grounded filming style, and the increasingly allegorical and absurdist proceedings is the allure...
   
   And it came at the time I was getting ready to film my own feature, which also played with cosmic jokes and a frustrating absurdity.
   

9. The Whale works too. And Sadie Sink and that relationship remind me of Jenny Murray and my own early short.
   
   Criticisms of The Whale being too stage-bound are besides the point -- that's the constraint of this exercise.  As are criticisms of fat-shaming.  It's not about the lives of fat people, but a meditation on the difficulties of healing broken people, one who happens to have an eating disorder.
   
   Is it melodramatic? Yeah, as with all Aronofsky films. And this one is a real tearjerker. But it's earned. What you don't see in that clip is the context that he's not speaking plain fact. It's just his possibly-delusional, possibly-inspired perception.
   
   The innocence reminds me of Emily Watson's turn in the brilliant Breaking the Waves.
    

10. At some point soon I will post to socials again, but the abundance of extra time when not having to think about it is exhilarating.

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Chris