Darren Aronofsky may have his favorite themes — obsession, a protagonist coming apart at the seams, an ending that gradually fades to white — but it’s hard to accuse him of playing it safe.
He grossed $300 million with Black Swan, a not-especially-commercial psychological body horror film about a ballerina.
He spearheaded the career revivals of Mickey Rourke and Brendan Fraser.
He made a Biblical epic in 2014, a genre assumed to be 50 years past its due date, and Noah somehow became his biggest box-office hit.
And then he followed that up with mother!, an arthouse horror freak-out that seemed to deliberately antagonize anyone who just came to see Jennifer Lawrence.
It’s hard not to respect a career path like that, even if not everything hits.
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