Mila Kunis and Darren Aronofksy Defend Natalie Portman’s Dancing Abilities
By Damon Houx
Natalie Portman‘s stunt double has suggested that she did much of the dancing in Black Swan, and the non-controversy has been making the gossip rounds – leading to another double to suggest it was her backside in Your Highness. That was mostly debunked, and now Mila Kunis and Darren Aronofsky have stood up to defend Portman and her dance moves. Aronofsky sent out a press release, while Kunis talked to Entertainment Weekly and gave the money quote: “Natalie danced her a** off.”
Aronofsky and his editor counted the dance shots, and Aronofsky said that 80% were Portman, with 90% of the screen time of the dancing featuring Portman. Kunis talks about the safety net of having a double, and notes that no one involved with the film was suggesting that Portman did it all.
This story has gained some traction because it’s gossip – as I said before – and there are surely people who want to poo-poo Portman. Perhaps this is reasonable ammunition, but as Brian De Palma once said “The camera lies 24 frames a second” (which is a rebuttal of an old Jean-Luc Godard quote “The camera is truth at 24 frames per second”). Ultimately both De Palma and Godard are right. Cinema creates its own truth, but everything in it is manufactured to be there. If Portman created a believable reality to her dancing and audiences were fooled that it was all her, then that’s the art of cinema.
We may yet hear more, but with so many involved with the film throwing their support- overwhelmingly – to their leading lady the story should go away.
Do you find knowing about arguments like this distracting when watching a movie?
Wednesday, March 30, 2011 5:40PM
The publicity leading up to the Oscars made a bigger deal out of her dancing and training and suffering for the art than about her acting, so it's fair game for banter now. It was more a case of an actor being rewarded for a dramatic transformation, than anything else. Except now, we find out that the transformation wasn't nearly so dramatic, since in fact those shots were of her double dancing, and don't show Portman's moves or body at all. They should just cop to it, and admit they used the double to get the best dancing onscreen, there's no shame that they used FX to improve the film. I totally get why the director did it, to make the best film he could make. It's just a sham that Portman was promoted as someone who was so gifted and/or determined that she was able to master advanced ballet technique in a very short time – an amount of time in which NO ONE, no matter how talented, could possibly attain technical proficiency.