"Black Swan" is a devilishly energetic, angelically over-the-top, passionately driven, beautifully choreographed melodramatic masterpiece. The music, rearranged by Clint Mansell, fuels the sheer excitement and intensity of this nightmare tragedy while Natalie Portman is gorgeous and unforgettable in one of the greatest screen performances I have ever watched. The rest of the cast and crew secure this as the year's most daring film and quite possibly the best. The White Swan soars above traditional Hollywood simplicity while The Black Swan gives two middle fingers to cinematic cowardice all while refusing a safety net. "Black Swan" is in a class all by itself because of how perfectly it juxtaposes beauty with violence, sex with horror, good with evil, character with thrills, reality with fantasy, and humanity with perfection. It also creates a hybrid of genres while bending your mind. The only word I could mutter as I left the theater was 'wow.' This examination of dedication to the arts and overcoming your nature is a warning to those who fall too deeply into a performance. It's anything but dismissible.
Darren Aronofsky often does movies that serve as warnings. "Requiem for a Dream" showed the dangers of drug addiction using both legal and illegal drugs and how they destroyed four lives. "The Wrestler" analyzed what a comeback is as well as the cost involved to regain lost fame. "Pi," however, seems to be the most like "Black Swan" because they both analyze the price of perfection. "Pi" attached it to a logical medium, but "Black Swan" takes place in a New York City ballet company. Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) is a very sweet, awkward girl living with her mother. She is fragile in her life as she seems to have no real friends but is perfect in technique for ballet. The only person who ever calls her cell phone is her mother, and the other ballerinas in the company mock her. After director Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassell) casts off the former prima ballerina in the company, Beth (Winona Ryder), for reasons explained but unreliable, Thomas announces that a new, fresh face will be the lead in their upcoming production of Swan Lake. The catch is that the lead will have to play both the frail White Swan but also her evil twin, the sexy, manipulative Black Swan. As you are most likely aware, Nina is perfect for the White Swan but lacks the raw sexuality needed for the Black Swan.
The movie goes into an interesting direction at this point. It becomes a psychological thriller with an unreliable witness as Nina begins to discover her inner Black Swan. Nina lands the role before meeting Lily (Mila Kunis), but she discovers that Lily is the incarnate for the Black Swan. Nina doesn't strive to be like Lily in obvious ways such as dressing or talking like her but instead has a core change; she masturbates, experiments with a drug, has anonymous sex in a bathroom stall, and becomes disgusted at her room, dressed in pink and white with stuffed animals. In light of becoming the Black Swan, she casts off her baggage as the White and shifts into something evil.
It may seem like I'm giving away too many plot details, but like all great movies, "Black Swan" is all about the journey rather than the destination. We watch like observers in a zoo as Nina becomes something sexual but ugly. I felt pain for this shift because I genuinely liked and pitied the White Swan, but there is never regret in Nina's turnaround in her mind. She loves where she is going because she believes that it is the only way to achieve perfection.
There are so many levels to this film. First of all, Nina sees some bizarre images including her reflection acting differently than she, her face on other bodies, and the glare of her mother's paintings following her. Are these things real? We can assume not, but within the context other questions about what is real and imagined are raised. I've previously mentioned that Nina as our main character is an unreliable witness because what she sees and what takes place may not be the same, but writers Mark Heyman, Andres Heinz, and John McLaughlin were brilliant in keeping this focus steady and unflinching. We never see the world according to anyone else, so the question of real and imaginary remains.
The film is a melodrama with excellent reason. Being personally unfamiliar with Tchaikovsky's score for Swan Lake, my sister pointed out to me that the themes as well as the emotional climax of the film were mostly taken directly from Swan Lake and rearranged to fit this different context. Clint Mansell simply does a wonderful job with these themes, making the soundtrack to the movie my favorite of the year as well as an all-time best on my list.
"Black Swan" keeps its energy high throughout the movie and has masterful pacing. When you leave the theater, you don't feel drained but instead energized. It's a wonderful feeling that is rarely felt during movies today, but the flick nails it admirably. It's my favorite movie of the year, and after some debate, it replaced "Inception" as my best of the year. It's bold, unflinching, and has some of the best and most realistic characters I've witnessed in my life. Movies like "Black Swan" (and this year's "Inception" to be fair) just aren't made very often, but when they fully and completely nail every single second, I can't watch them enough times. It's a great film- see it as much as you can.
Rated R for strong sexual content, disturbing violent images, language, and some drug use.
Check your local theater for showtimes.
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