Review of Black Swan (2010) by Blake P — 18 Jun 2014

"I felt it. It was perfect." Nina (Natalie Portman) whispers as she closes her performance as the Swan Queen in "Swan Lake". After years of dancing with technical perfection rather than emotion, Nina loses both her mind and her life in an attempt to "feel" her performance instead of simply "doing" it. At the beginning of the film, she is a reflection of the white swan - fragile, virginal, and naïve - but by the end, she succumbs to her inner destructive self, transforming into the sinful character that is the Black Swan.

Ballet is a beautiful dance from an outside perspective, with its glassy smooth delicacy and intricate direction. "Black Swan" gives us a portrait of the inside, one that may be over-dramatized for film, but still manages to remind us that the beauty presented to us is shallow enough to crumble right beneath our fingertips. We find that, in the world of ballet, there is more to it than just stunning atmosphere. There is a great deal of torture, and through Nina, we live through it in the most extreme sense.

Nina has been dancing her entire life - it's hard to tell if she truly loves it, or if she is forced to do it because her domineering mother (Barbara Hershey) enforces it. She is a grown woman, yet the two live together. At first, it appears to be a happy relationship, but once we come to notice that Nina's room is painted pink and decked out with stuffed animals, and her mother doesn't seem to have any friends of her own, it's clear that Nina is living in a twisted sort of psychological prison that seems to be even more dangerous than a real one.

At the moment, her life revolves around the local production of "Swan Lake". When she dances, we can see her veins twitching as she takes every precaution needed to move with flawlessness, but there is no true heart - she is unable to let loose from her mind, which seems to be controlled by the cage of pressure that her mother locks her in. Her instructor, Tomas (Vincent Cassell), is intrigued, both wanting to sleep with her and unlock her self-conscious mindset - also fascinated is Lily (Mila Kunis), a newbie that walks on the wild side of life. Nina is caught in the middle of a sick game of tug-of-war, unsure if she should listen to the temptation that lies within the bodies of Lily and Tomas, or stay the helpless child her mother wants her to be.

In the process, she descends into a madness that would make Ingrid Bergman in "Gaslight" proud.

Visually, "Black Swan" is a triumph in combining icy beauty with utter grotesqueness, reminiscent of Dario Argento's Technicolor horror stylings in the 1970s. There are one too many close-ups of the feet of the dancers, close-ups that are so close-up that we can hear every snap, crackle, and pop they make, which takes away the feathery lightness we originally see and replaces it with something akin to a sick sort of torture. Portman's bone-skinny frame is a reminder that the life of a ballerina is not an easy one, rather one that requires discipline seen by few.

But the discipline shown by Portman, Kunis, and Darren Aronofsky is tremendously impressive - Portman is a knockout as Nina, capturing her transition from, as her mother would say, a sweet girl to a girl who cannot get ahold of her mind. Portman trained for months to look and act like a ballerina, and the results are game-changing - the dedication she shows on screen is something to applaud, as she becomes a soul so tortured by everything around her that we forget that this is the same actress who made her breakthrough as a tough-talking little girl in "Léon: The Professional", the same actress who achieved franchise fame in the resurrection of the "Star Wars" series.

Kunis is a perfect foil for Portman, utilizing her dark looks and magnetic personality to mirror the bad-girl personality the Black Swan possesses. We are just as easily seduced by her as Nina is - we want to take a stroll with her on the blackened side of the spectrum, without hesitation. And Aronofsky, who for years has made films that harness the same sort of black magic "Black Swan" wears on its sleeve, lets Nina's self-destruction take its time, adding a constant unsettling aura that is unshakable.

"Black Swan" is just disturbing enough to sit with us for days, making for an operatic, melodramatic film experience that is just as stunning as "Swan Lake" itself.