I'm suppose to finish my Blade Runner write up, and I will, but after seeing Black Swan I had to write this first.
Black Swan takes us into the world of ballet and prima ballerinas. It is a psychological thriller that delves into the hallucinations and life of a neuritic perfectionists dancer named Nina (Natalie Portman). She is a dancer for the New York City ballet company with aspirations of being the main soloist of the company. The ballet director Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel) reluctantly gives Nina the part of the Swan Queen in his production of Swan Lake in which the same dancer must play both the white and black swan. I say he gives her the part reluctantly because he knows that her innocence and naivete maker her a perfect fit for the the white swan but not the black swan and he mentions this almost every time they are in a scene together.
Nina's goal in life is to be perfect. Her perfectionism keeps her from letting go and giving into the passion of her art. This is the one thing that stands between her and performing the black swan. It is in her nature to have her technique right and choreography down. The role of the black swan requires her to feel the music and let go of inhibitions. Something that Lily (Mila Kunis), a newcomer to the company, has no problem doing. Lily is the opposite of Nina in every possible way. Darren Aronofsky brings out these differences through the characters manners of speech and even the way they dress. Nina usually wears clothes that are pink, white, and light grey while Lily wears black and darker greys. Lily wears makeup while Nina sports a natural look. These physical differences are the first indication to the audience that these two characters opposites will play a major role to the story and how Nina perceives her world. In Nina's mind Lily is after her role as the Swan Queen. Nina sees Lily as a darker mirror image of herself. In her mind she knows she has to either become like Lily or Lily will be the Swan Queen.
This brings me to the whole psychotic aspect of Nina's character. In this film we slowly get pulled in to Nina's hallucinations and delusions. At the beginning it is easy to differentiate reality and what a hallucination Nina's head. This very thin line gets more and more blurry as the film progresses until the audience is unable to tell w if what they are seeing is reality or all in Nina's mind It is done so well that by then end you have to really think about what you just saw.You are forced to break down every scene in your mind to take apart reality from psychotic delusions. Even then after talking to some people about the film there is no real consensus of what was real and what wasn't. The ending thus becomes open to interpretation. I don't like to spoil things here for people who haven't seen it but the main question that people leave with at the end of the film is how much of the outcome was a psychotic episode? Did she actually finally reach that so elusive perfection? We know that she performed to perfection but was the ending just dramatized in her head to feed into the idea that once perfection is reached there is no need to continue?
Natalie Portman come out of her own shell as an actress at the same time as we see Nina transforming before our eyes in the film. She managed to play the fragile character so well that she constantly looked like if you even brushed by her she would break into a million pieces. Natalie took on a character that she had never tackled before, which is always risky, and managed to become that character. It was a risk and it worked. So far she has already won the Golden Globe. Is the Oscar next? This critic thinks so.
Black Swan brought the audience behind the curtain of an art form most people know nothing about. A world were beauty and perfection is the ultimate goal and achieving it would land you all the praise, applause and admiration you could ever hope for. The grace and elegance of a dancer comes at a great price to their health, life, and sometimes even sanity. I personally love ballet. It is so beautiful how much emotion can come through from just dance. I admire the hard work and dedication that goes into becoming a good dancer and the outcome of all that hard work. This film shows an extreme of all that must go into being a good dancer and that striving for ultimate perfection can be a destructive thing. The film displayed the beauty and ugliness of this world through impeccable acting and great use of the camera to display the inner chaos that was happening inside Nina's mind. This is a must see movie for all who love, appreciate, and create art of any form and medium.
