"Black Swan" (2010)

  Darren Aronofsky's "Black Swan"never once reveals exactly what it is, which is ironic. The film's wildly unrestrained psychosomatic narrative is devoted to subjectivity, free to romp in artistic grandeur, though it's crafted around one calculating, rigidly disciplined performer who can't allow her mind to be free for a second. The young woman is Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman), and her passion and elegance is apparent as we observe her daily routine - her walk from the humble apartment she shares with her loving, if not coddling mother (Barbara Hershey) to her New York City ballet company, run by one formidable director Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassell). It is here where Nina will thrash out the limbering precision of her dance regiments, in preparing for the company's production of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, for which swarms of students covet the lead of Swan Queen. Leroy acknowledges that the ballet has been done ad nauseam, but this time it's going to be "stripped down, raw, visceral;" "Black Swan" brilliantly encompasses the concise leanness of Leroy's approach along with its sinister facets that lie beneath.

  It is nominally a hybrid adaptation of Dostoyevsky's novella The Double and Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's 1948 balletic opus The Red Shoes, yes, and how paranoia and competition can dwindle away at the most committed of minds under the portent of pressure. But just as Rosemary's Baby - a seminal film for Aronofsky which the director publicly cites to be of major influence - was less concerned with the occult than with the perils of invested trust, so too is "Black Swan" devoted to greater thematic layering. It is a fascinating portrait of obsession, a film that sees the disturbing hum of anxiety in the physical manifest - thus the players in this gorgeously twisted world become slaves to the life-long audition from which they cannot escape.

 A cunning balance of seduction and sweetness with unsettling repulsion, "Black Swan" works effectively as dynamic melodrama before taking a wicked turn into Cronenbergian horror-fantasy. Natalie Portman anchors this expertly as the fragile, innocent young talent navigating her way down the darkest corridors of sexuality and the looming threat of failure. Nina is suffocated by the expectations of all those around her to embody both the White and Black Swan - the former being her perfect match, the latter evading her grasp. That she is challenged for the dual role by the presence of a more naturally "free" Lily (Mila Kunis) only accelerates the rapid pace of her fears, which soon begin to surface skin deep.

  Empathy for Nina might have been hard to find in a world this insular, but Portman's fearless performance along with the same knack for minutia and realist grit of Aronofsky's 2008 The Wrestler allow the material to transcend in a lavish romp that begs us to surrender to its dazzling visual splendor. Hand in hand with Aronofsky's apt study of the athleticism of the human body, we observe Nina's identity slowly begin to rear its freakish, other-worldly head - only to snap back with lightning speed to the hallucinatory discovery of her bodily desires.

  Two minor female roles - Hershey as Erica Sayers and Winona Ryder as womanizing Leroy's former "little princess" Beth Macintyre - cleverly craft the picture's lingering tales of the original story's traditional "dying swan" element without relying too heavily on overt plot points. Both women, in their jealousy and obsession to live vicariously through the ballet that offers Nina the ideal career, underscore the political tensions that come along with any modern backdrop of competition. Erica listens and supports, but pushes and antagonizes once too far, while Beth's long-gone days as Swan Queen remain all too foreboding of Nina's hellish descent into madness.

  As we check in and out, along with Nina's mind, to the internal, hushed sounds of buzzing audiences, the picture lulls deeper into absurdity, and by the third act the film asks us to check all rationale at the door. Though in this case, the sensationalist flair with which Aronofsky crafts "Black Swan"'s final choreography sequences (gorgeously staged by Benjamin Millepied) along with frequent collaborator Clint Mansell's masterful arrangement of Tchaikovsky's original score make the stunning rite of passage all the more poignant, never bordering on potential camp territory.

  "Black Swan"'s ability to polarize audiences will ultimately lie in how its maker's utter disregard for restraint or conventional form will sit with those on the receiving end. It is a film that refuses to sit still and commit to certainty, but in this case that's hardly a criticism. The tragedy of Nina's blind ambition will remind the film's lovers and detractors that perfection, if it can be reached at all, cannot be reached without a leap of faith.

★★★★★ (5/5)


Cast & Credits

Nina Sayers/The White Swan: Natalie Portman
Lily/The Black Swan: Mila Kunis
Thomas Leroy/The Gentleman: Vincent Cassel
Erica Sayers/The Queen: Barbara Hershey
Beth Macintyre/The Dying Swan: Winona Ryder

Fox Searchlight presents a film directed by Darren Aronofsky. Written by Mark Heyman, Andrew Heinz and John McLaughlin. Running time: 108 minutes. Rated R (for strong sexual content, disturbing violent images, language and some drug use).

This review originally published in Vol. 90, Issue 13 (Dec. 9, 2010) of The Montclarion.