Black Swan (Review)

Her mother calls her a “sweet girl”. She is treated as if she remains in childhood, her room a shrine of virginal innocence. She’s a ballet dancer, and has just been cast as the Swan Queen in an upcoming production of Swan Lake. Her sweetness and incorruption works well when she plays the White Swan… but when called upon to play the seductive and devious Black Swan she comes up short. To adequately play the Swan Queen she will need to balance both sides, but right now she’s all white and no black, right down to her clothing.

This woman is Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman), one of the most dedicated dancers working under Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel). He has a history of sexual relationships with his dancers, but when he puts "the moves" on Nina she is more resistant. He pressures her to unleash her inner Black Swan, and no matter how hard she tries she never is able to completely let go, mostly thanks to her overprotective mother.

From there, not much can be said about Black Swan without spoiling the whole ordeal, and an ordeal it is. This is not a film that will inspire much of a middle ground. Some will find it to be one of the year’s best films, while others will find repellent and worthless. I gladly place myself in the former, for I am one who has long been blown away by films that leave no risk un-taken. I thought the best film of 2009 was Inglourious Basterds because it was made by a man with no fear in Quentin Tarantino. Darren Aronofsky, director of Black Swan is similarly over-the-top, though in a very different way.

Aronofsky never goes halfway, best known for his past films Requiem for a Dream and The Wrestler, both films that are famously brilliant but extremely difficult to watch. Black Swan is no different, a claustrophobic experience that fully submerges you in a mind on overload. We journey right along with Nina as she must determine the woman she wants to be, and in the process she goes right down near the deep end.

In a way, Black Swan works as a bookend of sorts to Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island, which came out earlier in the year. Both spend most of their running times, particularly the third acts, having the audience constantly guess what exactly is going on. Black Swan is the stronger film of the two, as it uses the insanity to address actual themes about the maturation of a modern woman. It may be positively anarchic at times, but it’s filmmaking at its most aggressively powerful.

Mila Kunis shows up as Lily, who represents Nina’s antithesis. She is all black and little white, but as Thomas seems to be obsessed with the seductive qualities of the Black Swan she seems poised to take the part from right under Nina’s feet. In general, the cast itself mirrors the characters of Swan Lake, and this is far from unintentional. Nina is the White Swan, while Lily is the Black Swan with other characters around the edges. Some may call Black Swan trash, but they are not paying attention to the craft of it all. At times it may have the look and feel of a cheap horror movie, but there’s much more going on.

I haven’t seen Natalie Portman give a performance half as great as she does here, and it’s a darn near impossible one. How does one convey the emotions she needs to here without being too obvious or over the top? Somehow, some way, she pulls it off beautifully and bewitchingly. The camera just about never leaves Portman’s side, spending long sequences following her as she walks the streets of New York, like a ghost haunting her consciousness.

Whether one finds Black Swan brilliant or repugnant, it will not leave them be for the foreseeable future. It’s unforgettable, and I mean that in the best possible sense. Black Swan is a film of great ambition and it takes no prisoners in its quest to boggle, dazzle, and leave the audience guessing scene after scene. Nina is a fragile character, and the more pressure one puts on her to lose herself, commit herself to her work, or even relax, the more she becomes confused as to who exactly she is. To watch Black Swan is to watch the walls closing in.

Rating:  (out of 4)