The films I'm going to talk about here, are not famous examples of this, and probably never will be, but a thematic similarity struck me all the same; the films are Black Swan, and Passion Play. These two films will probably never be compared anywhere other than in this article because they're at opposites of the success spectrum; Black Swan was a critical and commercial darling, while Passion Play was the opposite of one of those. Black Swan won Natalie Portman an Oscar, while Passion Play's stars would not even recommend it.
But here's what the films have in common, they're both steadfastly contemporary tales, about women with the literal physical qualities of birds. This may seem like a cheap coincidence, but I mention it because each film's approach to that subject encapsulates what made one fail, and the other succeed.
Let's start with Passion Play, as that's the one your less likely to have seen. Megan Fox stars as a woman with wings. She literally has bird wings sticking out of her back; and Mickey Rourke is a drugged-out jazz musician who rescues her from a carnival freak show. As a modern tale though, and an art-house film at that, Passion Play chooses to straddle the real world, and the world of magical realism; it's an admirable, decision, but ultimately foolish, as any scene that juxtaposes the two worlds ends up looking silly.
...Or so goes the general consensus. It's not that I disagree with that consensus, but I saw potential in those scenes. A scene that involves Fox in a plastic surgeons office, discussing procedures to remove the wings may have made a great music video, for instance; reduced to visuals, and perhaps scant bits of exposition, it would be a powerfully surreal scene, and the juxtaposition of fantasy and realism would be nothing but effective. But burdened with being a part of a larger plot, and having having conventional filmic elements like dialog, the scene is leaden.
That burden is the inherent burden of feature films: as subtle as the makers may want them to be, there's a story to tell, and a lot of time to fill up. A certain amount of explanation is going to happen, and it can easily be too much. An artier film may have shot the surgeon's office scene like a music video, but a film with a story to tell will have Mickey Rourke angrily exclaim "normal ain't never won no prizes." The more unlikely you make the story, the more you have to explain, and excuse the unlikelihood.
Now let's talk about what Black Swan did differently… Put bluntly, while Passion Play was about a woman who was also a bird, Black Swan was about a woman who may or may not have been turning into a bird, but was most likely just crazy. Black Swan was very careful to accompany scenes of Portman's transformation with scenes that indicated that other characters did not see what she saw. Black Swan sidestepped the problem of magic and realism looking ridiculous together, by establishing all of its fantasy elements as happening inside of Portman's mind. It was the smart thing to do, but compared to Passion Play, it's a cheat. Any scene in Black Swan that challenges belief can be dismissed with an "oh, it's just in her mind."
Black Swan was never in danger of looking the kind of ridiculous that Passion Play looked. All Megan Fox's plastic surgeon would've seen when examining Portman, would be self-inflicted wounds. The scene would have played out as sombre, but not silly. And the film could move on without over-explaining, because there would be nothing to explain, and nothing for the audience to question.
So what have we learned? That sticking to reality is best? That a film maker shouldn't be too ambitious with what they're asking the audience to believe? Sounds pretty cynical, doesn't it; In the romantic sense in which we are taught film-making, that's not how we're taught it should work. We're taught that it's about making the fantastical real; it's about being a crafter of suspension of disbelief. I think that romantic vision may be a little too literal; Black Swan succeeded by establishing Portman's visions as being not real, then seducing us into her way of seeing things. Passion Play may have been braver in what it asked us to believe, but it took us to another world and left us there, while Black Swan let us see our world through another's eyes.
