Nine things you need to know about Darren Aronofsky

From biblical allegories to psychological dramas to sports dramas, the filmmaker’s oeuvre pushes the cinematic envelope, says Sucheta Chakraborty

October 23, 2018 09:12 pm | Updated 09:12 pm IST

Eclectic range: (anticlockwise from above) Darren Aronofsky; stills from Requiem for a Dream; Black Swan; and The Wrestler

Eclectic range: (anticlockwise from above) Darren Aronofsky; stills from Requiem for a Dream; Black Swan; and The Wrestler

As critically acclaimed American filmmaker, Darren Aronofsky gets ready to conduct a masterclass at the Jio MAMI 20th Mumbai Film Festival with Star, we note the nine stand-out qualities of his film portfolio.

A filmmaker who is known for surreal and hypnotic works like Requiem for a Dream (2000) and Black Swan (2010), Darren Aronofsky became fond of alternative art and cinema at an early age. He has spoken of his interest in films that are polarising and different, and has frequently admired the works of directors like Roman Polanski, Luis Buñuel, Ingmar Bergman, David Cronenberg and Alfred Hitchcock .

2. Starting with his debut feature Pi (1998), Aronofsky’s films have typically been enormously ambitious projects which have dealt with abstract concepts and developed around heavy themes like religion, mysticism, mathematics, environmentalism, psychology and creativity. Films like The Fountain (2006) which straddles stories separated by time and space and united by themes of love and immortality, and the $125m-worth Noah (2014) which looks at the popular biblical myth and turns it into a colossal tale of ecology and survival, attest to a remarkably audacious and independent creative vision .

3. Although never working within established modes, Aronofsky has nonetheless used the styles and conventions of genres like science fiction, psychological horror and fantasy to varying ends. Mother! (2017), for instance, starts off by employing classic horror tropes and with what seems initially like a familiar tale of home invasion before unspooling its rapidly escalating and increasingly stressful nature-creation allegory on the viewer .

4. Aronofsky’s films often feature obsessive characters who are on desperate and inexorable paths to self-destruction. In The Wrestler (2008), Robin Ramzinski (Mickey Rourke) is made to pay the price for pursuing and succeeding at a career in professional wrestling which has left him broke, lonely and ailing. Yet, despite the threat to his life and all that he holds dear, it is to the ring that he must return for in it has the promise of redemption .

5. In the brilliant and devastating Requiem for a Dream , Aronofsky uses to spectacular effect an editing technique that he has termed as ‘hip-hop montage’. Borrowing from the way songs are sampled in hip-hop music, this type of montage uses a series of simple images which appear in very quick succession and are paired with sharp, exaggerated sound effects. In the film, these sequences are repeated often to denote the characters’ increasing dependency on drugs .

6. Stylistically, Aronofsky has admitted to being an expressionist who uses the camera to push the emotion quotient of a scene.

The result is a visual style that is not just distinctive but also strikingly innovative. Extreme close-ups, claustrophobic frames, long tracking shots where the camera relentlessly follows characters around and a technique in which a Steadicam is attached to the actor’s body are used often.

It’s as if the camera refuses to let the characters be, despotic in its need to capture every emotion .

7. Aronofsky’s intense filmic style creates deep emotional involvement for the audience who get sucked into the characters’ rapid and inevitable descent into darkness. It is Aronofsky’s extraordinary use of the tools offered by his medium, i.e. sound and image, which creates this participatory effect for the viewer.

The experience of watching an Aronofsky film then, is often disturbing, frantic and stifling. Critics have pointed out how in spite of his intellectual themes, his work includes examples of what is called ‘the cinema of the body’ because of the intensely vivid sensations he seeks to produce .

8. Adding to this almost visceral reaction they elicit in the viewer is the fact that Aronofsky’s films frequently show bodies in pain. Both in The Wrestler and The Black Swan , the performer’s body is pushed to its very limits, constantly bruised, bleeding and in agony. In Requiem , the body becomes the site of not just extreme pain and abuse but also humiliation .

9. Aronofsky’s go-to composer is the former lead singer of the band Pop Will Eat Itself – Clint Mansell. The English musician has created the scores for almost all of Aronofsky’s films, which includes the haunting ‘Lux Aeterna’ for Requiem .

Mother! though was a not able exception with Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson originally scoring the film. But after seeing the 90-minute score synced up with a rough cut of the film, both Aronofsky and Jóhannsson agreed not to use the original score. Instead they used a new minimal score focused on sound design by Craig Henighan.

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.