Review: Black Swan

Gloriously extravagant and psychotic, Black Swan is more overwhelming than a subtle character study. At the very least, thrilling entertainment, and at its best, mesmerising drama.

The first three words that come to mind when I think back to Black Swan are "bat shit crazy". Whether this is a good thing or not will likely depend on personal preference, but at the very least it deserves your viewing attention once. To call it merely crazy would be an injustice, Black Swan has insanity and direction, beauty and sleaze in equal measure. That’s to say, this film is a stunning artistic endeavour and dazzling entertainment that will leave you breathless.

Natalie Portman plays Nina Sayers, a mid-twenties ballerina in the New York Ballet Company, desperate for her first leading role after the abrupt retirement of star dancer Beth MacIntyre (Winona Ryder). The director Thomas Leroy (played with flair and brilliant sleaze by Vincent Cassel) is putting on a production of Swan Lake, and chooses Nina as the Swan Queen. Innocent and contained, she is perfect for the White Swan, but the role is a dual-character, also portraying the sensual and seductive Black Swan. Despite her technical proficiency and doubtless talent, Nina struggles to cut loose and dances without passion. She wrestles with the pressure of the catty stage environment, the expectations of her former-ballerina mother and the arrival of new rebellious dancer Lily (Mila Kunis), herself ideal for the Black Swan. Under the encouragement of Thomas, she begins exploring her darker side, but as the pressure reaches a fever pitch, Nina begins to crack and the reality around her falls apart.

Director Darren Aronofsky has said frequently that Black Swan is intended as a companion piece to his 2008 film The Wrestler. Ballet and wrestling don’t immediately appear to go hand-in-hand, but the comparison is very valid; both films feature performers who sacrifice their bodies for their art and struggle to separate their professional life on the stage from their personal life off it. In both films Aronofsky likes to emphasise their physical dedication by utilising a series of close-up scenes with his leads as they prepare and nurse their injuries. In The Wrestler, Randy’s inability to separate performance from real life left him alone and isolated from his daughter. In Black Swan, it causes a psychological struggle within Nina as she tries to achieve perfection in her role and unleash her passionate, dark side while remaining the sweet little girl that still lives at home with her mother.

In its opening act, the film shows us a girl whose entire life has been dedicated to ballet and her mother Erica. They live together in a small apartment, decorated with trinkets and memorabilia from Erica’s past dancing career. Nina’s bedroom, pink and littered with cuddly toys, looks like that of a 12-year-old girl’s. It’s clear that she has not had chance to live a life outside of constant dance practice and her mother’s overbearing gaze. This reflects on her demeanour; lightly-spoken and insecure, she’s a delicate and innocent girl. But this won’t do for the Black Swan, so the director taunts her into experimenting with her sexuality and discovering her dark side. This combined with the pressure of the role, the bitchiness of the dance company and her insecurity, has an unhealthy effect on Nina’s mind. She begins seeing doubles of herself and having disturbing dreams and visions of her transformation into some kind of beastly bird. These extend to her rival dancer Lily, who she idolises as a role model, but who she fears may be stealing her role, and perhaps her existence.

This makes the film a psychological thriller which Aronofsky’s direction pulls off excellently. The carefully choreographed dance scenes demonstrate great beauty, while the claustrophobic camera-work emphasises Nina’s unstable mental state. The film focuses on the simple dualist premise present in Swan Lake and makes elaborate use of mirrors and a sharply contrasting monochrome palette. The film has an introspective quality, strongly reflecting the ballet at its centre to the point where the final dance is a thinly-veiled metaphor for what is happening to Nina herself. The melodrama evidenced in any ballet is multiplied in Black Swan as it enters its final act. All subtlety is thrown to the wind and it climaxes with a raucous and thrilling finale, aided marvellously by Clint Mansell’s booming score, riffing effortlessly on Tchaikovsky’s music.

A sensory overload, Black Swan looks and sounds beautiful and overwhelming. But more than anything, it’s a triumph of its cast. As mentioned earlier, Cassel is an excellently reprehensible fusion of artistic pretension, self-inflated ego and advantageous sexuality. Barbara Hershey, as Nina’s mother, manages to portray the demanding control that has driven her daughter to the brink of insanity, showing only good intentions and love for her all the while. Mila Kunis contrasts with Nina’s character flawlessly, exhibiting the looseness, seduction and confidence that she lacks. Despite these strong supporting performances though, this is definitely the ‘Natalie Portman Show’. She is a revelation in Black Swan, demonstrating Nina’s innocence and insecure frailties at the beginning of the film with ease, and then moving effortlessly into the darkness of the part. This is Portman’s first foray into such a challenging role, and she meets it with the unrelenting intensity and commitment required to make it work, just as her character does in the film. Requiring ten months of training, her physical transformation to the ballerina petiteness and dancing ability shown throughout is impressive enough. But it’s her drastic psychological metamorphosis as the film progresses which is why she is the overwhelming favourite for Best Actress at this year’s Academy Awards. Her physical presence in the final scene alone proves that her inevitable Oscar win is well-deserved.

Black Swan’s extravagance and complete lack of subtlety may put off a few, but for many its liberal use of jump-scares, sexually risqué scenes and extremely melodramatic soundtrack will only add to the experience. And an experience it most certainly is - Aronofsky has once again presented us with a compelling character study, this time an unrelenting insight into the psychological trauma induced by a character’s desperate pursuit of perfection. What follows is both beautiful, trashy, sophisticated and insane. “Bat shit crazy” indeed, but all the better for it.