Review of Black Swan (2010) by Smijatov — 16 Oct 2011

Black Swan is almost as perfect as it's protagonist's final performance. With an incredibly detailed, perfected, yet subtle performance by Natalie Portman - a career best, most certainly - Black Swan manages to keep ones attention fully throughout the length of the film. Not only does Portman shine, but so does the supporting cast, especially Barbara Hershey and Mila Kunis. With many fantastical aspects to the film, it is somewhat confusing and keeps one on the edge of their seat, since we never know what is really happening with Nina (Portman) and her surrounding. The cinematography is beautiful and the editing is done quite superbly. The musical score is very appropriate, with beautiful music by Tchaikovsky, including a techno-redo for a club scene, done by the Chemical Brothers.

The only aspect of the film that left me wanting more was a pre-story to Nina's situation. Yes, the focus of the film is rather appropriate, but a nice extra 5-10 minutes at the beginning to set the stage would be nice. Or some sort of flashbacks? That, of course, would take away from the mystique of the film, but by the end I did feel I wanted to know more about Nina and how she got to where she was. The film did that in many ways effectively, but I still felt there were some things Aronofsky could have worked out.