Dir. Darren Aranofsky US 2010
"I just want to be perfect."
I've been doing a good job this season of seeing all the probable Oscar contenders. I usually do this more out of a sense of personal necessity, rather than an attempt to win an Oscar pool or even come up with my own list of winners. Who or what gets an Academy Award is decided just as much by politics and popularity as it is by the quality of a movie or a performance. The Social Network seems to be the front runner this year for most of the big awards, but if I were allowed a vote, Black Swan would be my choice for Best Picture as well as Natalie Portman for Best Actress and Darren Aronofsky for Best Director. Had I not been sitting down while watching this film, it would have knocked me on my ass. While I wouldn't call it my favorite movie of the year (Hi-five Scott Pilgrim!), I did find it captivating and moving in a way that I haven't felt about a movie in a long time.
The film stars Natalie Portman as Nina Sayers, a sheltered young ballerina who is desperate to win the lead role in her company's production of Swan Lake. Her success is both encouraged and hampered by her disturbingly over-involved mother (Barbara Hershey) and her director Thomas (the always creepy Vincent Cassel). As Nina struggles to master the role of the seductive black swan, a rivalry with the newly arrived Lily (Mila Kunis) transforms her quest for perfection into a descent into madness.
This film is advertised as a psychological thriller, but I would have no trouble calling it a horror movie. There are a large number of moments in the film that are frightening for a variety of reasons. There's jump scares, gross-out moments and scenes of creeping, hypnotizing dread, all masterfully executed by Aronofsky, the actors and the effects team. Much of what I've read about the film compares it to David Cronenberg's work, but I would say that Dario Argento (especially Suspiria) is an equally strong influence. Many modern horror films claim/try to be "gritty and realistic", but Black Swan demonstrates how far off the mark they are by immersing you in an extremely mundane, tangible setting (Aronofsky uses the same over-the-shoulder camera work and grainy cinematography that he used to great effect in The Wrestler) and then having it come alive with other-worldly horrors.
Another little advertised fact about this film is how completely it is about ballet. It's a risky proposition, given the narrow range of popularity that ballet commands, to dive so completely into it in a film. With the exception of a ten minute segment in the middle of the film, the entire movie is set at either the ballet studio or Nina's apartment, which offers no reprieve given Nina and her mother's constant preoccupation with it. Surprisingly, this immersion isn't particularly expository. I don't feel that I learned a lot about ballet by watching this film (and I don't think I necessarily needed to) but I did get an extremely close look at everything that goes into it. The constant practicing, the endless preparation, the suprising amount of injury sustained, the abscence of the glamour and tranquility normally associated with ballet is all front and center in this film. It makes for an interesting look into something most people probably never think about.
Carrying this entire work on her skinny little shoulders in Natalie Portman. I've always wanted to like Natalie Portman more than I've actually liked her. She's very demure and intelligent in interviews, and
clearly has a good sense of humor, but her film choices are always a mixed bag and she seems to always play the same few notes (worried, upset, scared) in every thing she's in. Her role as Nina pretty much takes her usual persona and cranks it up to a raw, vicious extreme. Portman lost 20 pounds for the role of Nina (she didn't really seem like she had them to lose before that) and this weight-loss, combined with Aronofsky's intimate, naturalistic style of filmmaking, keeps her looking haggard and exhausted for the entire film. And even though it's not really possible to cover up the fact that Natalie Portman is insanely hot, small imperfections in her skin and way her ribs stick out during the dance sequences are all tiny reminders that neither she or the film are concerned with her looking her best. The emotional transformation that Nina slowly goes through is never anything but completely convincing and requires Portman to play her usual just as much as she goes against it. She seems to be the front runner for Best Actress this year and she totally deserves it.
Given how completely this movie is about Nina (I'm pretty sure she's in every single scene of the film), the rest of the cast is somewhat marginalized. Mila Kunis and Vincent Cassel do what they do best (be extremely sexy and be sexy in a creepy, douchey way, respectively), but the biggest standout other than Portman would be Barbara Hershey as her mother, Erica. I'm not to familiar with the earlier part of Hershey's career, but here she walks a passive-aggressive line between tragically sympathetic and utter batshit insanity. Sure she treats her 28 year old daughter like she's 8, but as Nina becomes more and more unhinged, the fear and concern in Erica's eyes makes her much more relatable that you'd want her to be.
Oh yeah, there's a lesbian sex scene in this. Between Mila Kunis and Natalie Portman. As I mentioned above with regards to Natalie Portman's unnatural waifishness, this movie does an excellent job of showing you something sexy and then making it fucked up and/or revolting. The sex scene is no exception. There's also a masturbation scene that's even worse, playing out exactly as a scene from a horror movie would. Fucked. Up.
I could probably go on forever about this movie. It's beautiful and frightening and engrossing and sad. If you see one Oscar-caliber movie this season, make it this one.
UP NEXT: Christmas break has left me far behind on my reviews. I'm going to try to knock out one a night this week until I'm caught up. Wish me luck. Tomorrow: Kid Galahad, starring Edward G. Robinson, Bette Davis and Humphery Bogart.
