Darren Aronofsky Articles
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Notable Festivals: Venice One of the lesser-talked about aspects of pursuing a career in filmmaking is the loss of that visceral or “magic” sensation that made us fall in love with the medium in the first place. The ability to passively sit back and let ourselves get swept up in the story becomes hampered by…
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Following the success of his 2014 feature, NOAH, director Darren Aronofsky once again turned to the commercial world to sustain himself as he prepped his next big effort. This chapter of his career finds Aronofsky bringing his iconoclastic vision to powerhouse establishment outlets like The New York Times and high profile fashion brands like Hugo…
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The biblical epic has always been a time-honored staple of American cinema, with some of the earliest films ever made drawing inspiration from the timeless stories contained within the “good book”. In the latter decades of cinema’s existence, these biblical films tend to be marked by a high-profile controversy over their artistic interpretations– films like…
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Riding high off the success of 2010’s BLACK SWAN, director Darren Aronofsky turned his attention to a long-gestating passion project that aimed to reimagine the classic biblical story of Noah’s arc. The logistical challenges of mounting such an ambitious project naturally made for a slower pace in development and pre-production, so Aronofsky filled his spare…
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Notable Festivals: Venice (Opening Night) Academy Award Wins: Best Actress The lo-fi independent production of 2008’s THE WRESTLER served to unleash director Darren Aronofsky’s ferocious creative energy, reconnecting him with the iconoclastic spirit that kickstarted his career. He knew that he couldn’t afford to bask in the glow of his artistic redemption– he had to…
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Notable Festivals: Venice (Golden Lion), Toronto Independent Spirit Award: Best Feature, Best Male Lead, Best Cinematography Everyone loves a good comeback story. As long as cinema has been around, it seems, this particular narrative archetype has persisted. It can happen either in front of or behind the camera, sometimes simultaneously– especially simultaneously, considering the trope’s…
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Notable Festivals: Venice Entering one’s thirties can be a loaded rite of passage– the telltale signs of aging like grey hairs, chronic pain from old injuries, and a slowdown of metabolism usually rear their ugly heads for the first time. It’s a time when many start to grapple with their future and the realism of…
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Independent Spirit Awards: Best Cinematography, Best Female Lead Notable Festivals: Cannes (out of competition), Toronto 2000’s REQUIEM FOR A DREAM is often cited as the de facto film that “you must see, but never want to watch again”– it’s a gut-wrenching, nauseating, and nightmarish experience that aims to convey the inescapable horrors of addiction. My…
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As part of the promotional campaign of PI’s release in 1998, director Darren Aronofsky highlighted the work of his composer, Clint Mansell, with a music video for the score’s de facto theme. Titled “PI R SQUARED”, the piece takes a fairly basic approach that only seems complicated thanks to rapid-fire, subliminally-appealing cuts synchronized with Mansell’s…
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Notable Festivals: Sundance (Directing Award), Independent Spirit Awards (Best Screenplay) At its heart, the filmography of director Darren Aronofsky is concerned primarily with the conflict between faith and reason. His stories find his protagonists as otherwise reasonable people laboring under some kind of delusion– a washed-up wrestler believes he’s on the verge of a comeback;…
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Few filmographies are as uncompromisingly independent and fiercely original as director Darren Aronofsky’s. From his scrappy lo-fi debut in 1998 with PI, to the release of his revisionist biblical epic NOAH in 2014, each of Aronofsky’s feature films convey an artist with an insatiable intellectual curiosity and a deeply-sympathetic view towards the terrors of the…