I've been mulling this thread idea around in my head for a while, and Kunz's recent call to action has inspired its creation.

While talking with my girlfriend who's writing a rather large paper that partially involves Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream (it's not film related, it's health behavior related), we stumbled upon something I think is pretty interesting:

He ends a lot of his movies the exact same way.

Mind you, I haven't seen Pi, and I don't remember exactly how The Fountain ends, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't fit into this theory. Still, look at how his other 3 films end:

Requiem for a Dream: Sara's dream sequence where she's finally on the game show and Harry is a success. The film fades to black as the audience cheers.

The Wrestler: After Randy's refusal to pin The Ayatollah, he climbs to the top rope for the Ram Jam, and leaps as the movie fades to black as the audience cheers.

Black Swan: Nina throws herself onto the mattress, whispers something about it being perfect, and the movie fades to black as the audience cheers.

What does all this mean? Why does Aronofsky end all these movies with the audience cheering? Does it link them somehow? Is he just a creatively stalled one trick pony? Is it just a coincidence?

I have a few theories that I'm not entirely sure of, but I'll hold back and let others respond first. What do you guys think?

Well, this might not be totally helpful, but The Wrestler and Black Swan were meant to be partner films that explore the same themes from different perspectives. I'm not sure about Requiem for a Dream, but as I remember, the audience applause was a motif that was used several times throughout. I'm not sure it's related.

I'm interested in your theories though, I'm a fan of Aronofsky.

I would caution against viewing the use of the same element across several movies as an act of creative inertia. There are many reasons a storyteller might want to do that, such as conceptual continuity across works, recurring obsessions, and comparing one constant element against a background of changing elements.

Were I to read into the obvious, I would say that certain things are important to Aronofsky, or at least to his characters. The acceptance of peers, a need recognition, the idea that celebrity will fill the holes in one's life...

Pi doesn't fit, given that it involves a person struggling with the thing that makes him worth celebrating to others, and The Fountain seems utterly outside these concerns, given the main character's single-minded obsession with one person to the neglect of all others.

The Wrestler and Black Swan are (among other things) about the quest for self acceptance. Requiem for a dream ends with a dream sequence, where all wishes, hopes to the point of obsession are fulfilled. The audience cheering very likely stands for self acceptance and inner peace. Even frigging Titanic ends with the "audience" cheering in a dream sequence, and again it is about inner peace, self acceptance and of course: redemption. Aronofsky very likely loves to address this part of the human condition and the "audience - fade to black" symbolism. I don't see a creative one trick pony here.

I'm not sure I totally agree with you on The Wrestler and Black Swan. I think they're about the transcendental nature of art and the sacrifices required to achieve perfection. If anything, they are about self destruction for a higher purpose. I can see how this is tempting to compare to Requiem for a Dream, but I think any such similarities are coincidental. I haven't seen Pi.

It is totally helpful! So helpful, in fact, that you've sort of taken the words right out of my mouth. I was going to mention the whole companion pieces angle, but since you did, there's no need. Your next post in this thread says as follows:



This was how I interpreted the endings in a nutshell. For me, Requiem for a Dream just doesn't fit with the other two, despite the similarities in the ending. You've said it better than I would have, so I'll just let the quote stand for itself.



As would I. I more or less just threw the option out there to play devil's advocate and to keep an open mind. That said, I'd still love to hear from someone who thinks that.

Of course that's what they are about. But why would a person want to achieve perfection at all costs? The answer is: self approval. Anything, even a higher purpose, only exists as concepts in our heads. The entire universe is nothing but something in our heads. Anything, any idea, any concept, any abstraction only exists in our heads. We are trapped inside ourselves. At the end of the day it is all about self approval. Of course the many different ways trying to achieve it, are different topics. That's why I said: these movies are (among other things) about self approval/self acceptance. read any good book about psychology and you will find it there.

To echo some of the previous posters, I don't feel that Requiem can be properly included here. Or, at least, it shouldn't be read to much into. The Wrestler and Black Swan are definitely two sides of the same coin thematically, but Requiem has a very different story to tell and so I think the ending is coincidental. Love that ending though.

You don't see at least a little common ground between Ellen Burstyn's character and Aronofsky's other lead characters?

Not enough to pass muster. Let's look at The Wrestler and Black Swan. Both Randy and Nina are artists (after a fashion, in Randy's case) who have achieved massive success in their field, and are pushing themselves to the limit physically and emotionally. And they both die (in my opinion) when the curtain falls, having flown as high as they could.

Ellen Burstyn's Sara has almost nothing in common with them. She's a lonely old woman who has never accomplished anything artistic--or anything at all really--who just wants her son to accomplish something and to love her. Certainly she wants to be on television as well, but it's her son's love and attention that she desires most. And even you disagree and think she just wants to be on television, her arc is markedly different than Randy and Nina's

I'm not thinking so much in terms of what they do, as much as I'm thinking of why.

Well if you just mean validation from being loved or wanted, don't we have to include Charles Foster Kane and Evita? I mean, that's a pretty common movie affliction, same director or not

Are those examples of the same director pathologically including it several times in the films he's directed?

Well I don't disagree with you in terms of philosophy. If ever there was a selfish objectivist, it's me. But even so, perfection in art isn't about self acceptance. Let me try to explain.

Are you an artist? Do you act or play music? If you do, you know that at a certain point, you are no longer working to perfect technical skills. You work to perfect the emotion that you evoke through your art. I have played piano for 14 years. I've gotten to the point where I know that the act of playing a piece is not the same as performing it. You have to feel the emotions you are trying to evoke in your audience while you perform. It is not unlike acting, really. Some may perform so that they can bring pleasure to their audience, but I perform because I love the feeling I get when I do it perfectly. It's almost an out of body experience. All you can feel in that moment is that emotion and the act of performing it. It is something that measurably affects my happiness as a human being. When you experience artistic perfection, you only exist within the confines of your performance. You effectively lose yourself.

These two films are about how far people will go to achieve that same feeling. The point Aronofsky is making by killing them both is that you lose your identity when you achieve artistic perfection. This is why I'm having trouble understanding where you're coming from. Maybe it's just your terminology, I'm assuming you mean self acceptance in the Aristotelian sense of happiness. Then again, I don't agree with a psychological approach to art.

Please just let me get this out of the way: I am a full time musician/composer and it greatly depends on your style(s) and approaches if you reach for perfection and being in "the zone". A great jazz pianist (which I am not) will always go through an intellectual process, especially during improvisation parts while trying to come up with fresh ideas, quotes from other tunes "on the fly", etc. It's an in and out thing (thinking and feeling with a little relying on intuition and your tool box of cool licks and voicings thrown in).
On the other hand: learning a written-out performance piece without the necessary mathematical analysis required by great jazz players (or music theory teachers for that matter), you can and should lose yourself, because as long as you still think, you aren't performing the piece. Only when you really feel it, you are there. That goes without saying. I, myself, rarely went there. I am usually busy writing notation, doing my stuff on the computer and on stage being busy reading and making it through the tunes wityhout messing up. I leave the insanely difficult and graceful performances to the geniuses.

Yes I agree with J. Kunz: the story arcs in The Wrestler and Black Swan are closely related. If I try to include Ellen Burstyn's character by finding a common motivation, I will end up with something like seeking, fulfillment, and the aforementioned self acceptance (through percieved outside acceptance), which are indeed common themes. BUT: I can clearly exclude one story arc in all three movies (I focus just on Ellen Burstyn here in Requiem) - none of these characters choses to come to terms with their own limitations and change their mind set at some point, which would be another possible story/character arc. All three are obsessed and can't help it. I don't think any of these characters chose being obsessed - it just happens to be that way.
Like they say: you don't chose (art - or insert here whatever you like), it choses you. Maybe I try to hammer a square peg into a round hole by trying to include Ellen Burstyn's character and find a pattern here - but maybe there is a pattern.

Well, that's certainly not what I was expecting! But my point still rings true, I think. It seems like you get where I'm coming from. My appreciation for The Wrestler and Black Swan stem from my experience as a classically trained musician. So for me, it was always about learning the piece first, and then transforming it into an experience. I have done jazz piano before, and it is a different breed altogether. The ends are the same, but like you say, the approaches are different. But as technical as it gets, surely you agree that jazz is nothing without emotion.

That is correct. Jazz without emotion is just wanking. The difference between jazz and classical music is: in classical music you don't (need to) know exactly what you play and why, you need to study the piece accurately and fully concentrate on the expression, articulation etc. = emotion. In jazz (especially as a pianist in a small group) you have a chance to personalize the performance and you make the piece your own (to a certain extend). The hard and exhausting chord, voicing, scale, melody and rhythmic analysis is necessary - but of course just a means to an end: emotion.

Some people here might not like this style, and dismiss it as hotel lounge plinkety-plang, but check the very complex thought process behind this, and yet it sounds just wonderful and "felt" not "thought". :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoDJl3vcpgo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xox5vXFX_ok

I am completely unrelated to the courses these guys try to sell!

I suppose one uniting theme in Requiem, The Wrester and Black Swann could be living with the consequences of your choices, and whether we choose to accept those consequences or not.

Requiem is pretty typical Hubert Selby Jr in that it is a story that even the utterly down-trodden lower orders don't always have destruction foisted upon them, but rather it is freely chosen. I'm not saying that because I think Selby Jr is unsympathetic to the dog-rough neighbourhoods he grew up in - quite the opposite - he like Dickens acknowledges to the full the moral choices even the little people make, and have to make, thus treating them equally and not patronisingly as lessers.

The "victims" in Requiem were all to blame for their plight, yes, even the Mother (despite he envoking genuine pity) because she chose to live in a bubble that was always doomed to burst. Their fate was the inevitable result of self-deception whilst living in the real world with real world consequences.... which is why it is uncomfortable to watch. Yes it could happen to you if you make these choices... f*ck up this badly!

Back to Aronofsky, he obviously saw this, and in The Wrestler there is a similar theme. Randy is a nice guy at base like the protagonist in Requeim (name escapes me) but he is a guy whose choices are coming home to roost. A man who defined his whole life through his physicality and everything that entailed to the exclusion of all else. Drugs, booze and the ironic brutality of mock fights have conspired to trash his health making him a near (heart) cripple at the time a school-teacher of other square of a similar age would be thinking of a holiday home.

A fair % of the film is Randy feeling sorry for himself and trying to undo the choices he made. He tries to patch it up with his estranged, now-adult daughter. He regrets his trailor-park lifestyle. The only woman he can even attempt to connect with is a damaged, ageing stripper. The real world of 9-5 work that most of us embrace often seems too cold and dark to even contemplate. His awakening comes only with the knowledge that to some extent he must embrace his past, even if that means killing himself in the process with "the Ayotaolah" representing both his past triumphs and life-shortening excesses. The crowd cheering could be the cheering of Randy's self-acceptance. Whereas in Requiem self-acceptance is just a dream and in reality they all curl up into the foetal position to escape the fact that they are adults accountable for their own actions and revert back to being responsiblity-free children.

As for Black Swan, the theme appears that Portman needs to choose to consume herself to achieve what she wants to achieve. Althought whether she regrets that is not too clear as the chraracter appears too naive to know either way.

By the way guys, Petey won't pimp it but I will. He's got a nice writeup on that ending for Requiem on his blog.

Care to expand on this, Ken? I can kind of see what you're leading to, but I'd like to hear it explained.



Thanks, Rammy. You're the bees knees for that!

I think one way in which all 3 endings are related is that they all involve some sort of death. Sara's is the death of her dreams (Harry being successful and her appearing on the game show), Randy's is his literal death in the form of a sacrifice, and Nina's is either her literal death or the metaphorical death of a part of her that allows a new part to emerge, depending on how you interpret the movie.

Still, the audience clapping. What could that mean? It's one thing to fade to black after some form of death, but another thing altogether to insert an audience clapping as it happens. I think Randy and Nina are being rewarded in a way for their sacrifice. It can be seen as pure, I guess. Especially Randy, since he's obviously a better wrestler/entertainer than human being. Sara, though? There's definitely no reward for her. Hers is a false reality, a place she chooses to go to avoid actual reality.