Black Swan (2010)

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