Black
Swan
is a psychological thriller set in the world of ballet, a fact that was readily
evident from the film’s trailer. It involves a ballerina chosen to perform
the lead in a production of Swan Lake and
the emotional difficulties she has adjusting to her new fame and the pressure
that comes with it. I am not that familiar with the Tchaikovsky ballet, to be
honest, but apparently the female lead must portray two roles, the White
Swan and the Black Swan. The White Swan is good, as you might suspect, and the
Black Swan is evil and/or bad. Having your differing sides color-coded always
makes things easier for viewers. The film certainly seems to favor the Black Swan
as we watch the young woman chosen for this star-making role gradually take on
more and more of the traits associated with the darker half of the role.
Natalie
Portman plays Nina, the young ballerina plucked from the corps to play the Swan
Queen in both her white and black incarnations. Portman has always struck me as
a particularly fragile presence on screen, and that personality type is
used to good advantage in this film. She's both excited and intimidated by the
prospect of her shot at stardom. It's a dream she's always had or, at
least, one that her mother has always had, and she's determined to be, in her
words, "perfect" in the role. Unfortunately for Nina, her idea of
perfection is technical in nature, not emotional, and her inability to understand
how to mine the depths of her personality becomes an increasingly larger
problem. Portman's performance becomes increasingly edgy throughout the film as
Nina becomes more emotionally unhinged. It's a risky job of acting, one that
she carries out with distinction.
The
ballet company's artistic director, played by Vincent Cassel, originally tells
Nina that he would have chosen her had the part only been the White Swan.
Nina's technique in that role is flawless, and she has the innocence and
naivete for the part. It's the Black Swan, the more sensual, passionate half of
the role that she has difficulties with. He initially taunts her by telling her
he's given the part to another dancer, only to have Nina become aggressive when
he makes advances. It turns him on a bit, so he decides to give her a chance at
the role. How very French of him. I know that sounds like a bit of a dig, but
the movie itself loves to use our preconceived ideas of the French, of ballet
dancers, of domineering mothers, of almost every group depicted, actually, as
shortcuts to plot development. Cassel's Thomas is a Frenchman and a
straight man in the world of ballet, so he's going to bed as many different
women as possible. Don't act surprised when you see it on the screen.
Naturally,
there is a rival for the part, a dancer named Lily, played with aggressive
sunniness and looseness by Mila Kunis, formerly one of the stars of TV's That
70s Show. Kunis received a lot of praise for her performance, and she
is certainly good in the part, but save for the extended sequence where she
takes Portman's Nina out for a night of fun in order to loosen the newly minted
star up a bit, she doesn't really get a lot to do in the film except to keep
trying to befriend Nina. I like Kunis as an actress, but I think she is perhaps
best suited to comedic roles. She does inject a liveliness to her role here,
and you can certainly see why Thomas would be intrigued by her for the role of
the Black Swan. After all, it's a film about the ballet and there must be a rival,
and she must be almost the polar opposite of the star. Lily is certainly no
innocent.
Since
it's a film about the ballet, there must also be jealousy on the part of
the other members of the corps who wonder how Nina managed to get a part when
they are *sniff* obviously more talented. And there must be an aging ballet
star who has stayed around just a bit too long and is scheduled to perform for
the final time. In this film, it's Winona Ryder in the part of Beth. Beth
is unsurprisingly upset that a new and younger girl will be taking on a part
that she would feel is "rightly" hers. You should have already
guessed that Beth and Thomas have a past, and you ought to suspect that Nina is
going to have idolized Beth until she replaces her (in so many, many different
aspects of life). I was shocked to see Ryder in this film, not because the
thought of her as a ballerina is too foreign, though. She's just such a shrill
presence. When you look back on her earlier film career, it's a surprise to see
her as a drunken harpy in the few moments she's allowed on the screen.
I
could spend some time talking about Barbara Hershey's domineering mother, but
frankly, the whole domineering mother theme is appalling. Why must every mother
who tries to see her daughter succeed be portrayed as some sort of brutalizing
monster? It isn't that Hershey isn't good in the part. She's always been a
remarkable actress capable of conveying the most subtle of emotions to an
audience. Here, though, she's reduced to the kind of woman who overreacts to
everything her daughter says and does and who brings out the scissors (her
weapon of choice to trim sharp nails) every time she sees her daughter has
scratched herself. The scenes involving those scissors got to be a bit too much
after a while. I kept expecting them to be used as a murder weapon or
something.
The
plot begins to reveal moments that may have happened or may only be figments of
Nina's unbalanced psyche. It's not easy to tell exactly when you begin to
realize that things seem to be getting weird but that they may have only been
the imaginings of Nina's fevered brain. It’s possible, as some have posited,
that the entire movie may have all been a part of Nina's imagination. That
might be going a bit too far, given that so many details are grounded in what
passes for reality in movies these days. Viewers gradually start to notice that
they can no longer "trust" everything shown on the screen as being
"real." When that occurs is probably an indication of just how long
you think Nina has been falling apart.
Visually,
the film is a stunner. It has a shimmering quality that is particularly
appealing. The sequences that feature moments from rehearsals or from the
ballet itself are depicted beautifully and are quite impressive. It is always
difficult to render another art form on film, such as painting or musical
composition, but ballet seems to be a lovely fit for film. Watching a moment
like the one where Nina prepares a new set of ballet slippers is intriguing,
and this movie has lots of little touches like that to make the world of these
dancers seem more fully realized on screen.
There's
much to praise about this film, honestly, but it doesn't strike me as one of
the most outstanding cinematic achievements of 2010. The performances are good,
certainly, and the overall look of the film has received careful attention. Yet
there's nothing really new about the links between creativity and madness. Even
Plato discussed that thousands of years ago. We have seen numerous films over
the years about the lengths to which a performer will go to achieve what he or
she considers to be perfection. Black Swan offers us nothing
particularly new in that respect either. I suppose you could make a case for
this being one of the first wide-release films to address the issue of
lesbianism rather than gay male sexuality in the ballet, but even that is
problematic given what occurs after that scene between Nina and Lily. No,
overall, this film doesn't really seem to advance the art of cinema. It does
provide a couple of hours of intriguing, at times melodramatic entertainment,
and that's frequently sufficient for Academy voters, with their penchant for
finding what appeals to middlebrow intellects.
Oscar
Win:
Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role (Natalie Portman)
Other
Oscar Nominations:
Best Motion Picture, Best Achievement in Directing, Best Achievement in Cinematography,
and Best Achievement in Film Editing
