Directed by Darren Aronofsky.
Starring Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel, and Barbara Hershey.
Written by Mark Hayman, Andres Heinz, and John McLaughlin.
I just saw this last night and it actually made me want to start this blog so I could write about it. This is one of the best movies I've seen in a long time. Don't get me wrong, I've seen some great films in the past six years (when I last had a movie blog) like There Will Be Blood, Slumdog Millionaire, The Departed, Avatar, and several others, but they did not quite inspire me like this one.
The story is rather simple. Nina (Portman) longs to be Prima Ballerina in the New York Ballet. She is a technically perfect but cold dancer. This becomes an issue when she is cast as the Swan Queen in the season opener of Swan Lake. The director's (Vincent Cassel) new take on the story is that Nina will play both the white and black swans. This leads her into her descent into madness as she attempts to inhabit the role and finds this very difficult. There is, of course, much more to it, but to reveal more would be a crime. Suffice it to say Aronofsky and Portman make you feel like you are going mad with Nina.
Every aspect of Black Swan was done to perfection. First I'll talk about some of the technical aspects, starting with the sound design. Normally, this is not a noticeable part of a film. You hear what you hear booming out of 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound and don't notice much more than the fact you can hear the movie. This, however, was nuanced. If something was occurring behind Nina (Portman), it was heard from the rear speakers. This drew my attention, because it was a wonderful element that drew you into the film and took you along Nina's decent into madness.
Second, direction and cinematography. The film was shot on film, not digitally. I saw the film projected digitally which beautifully enhanced the grain of the film. I say this because this is not a film that would look right pristine and clear. The grain in the film shows us right away that Nina is not seeing her life clearly. Aronofsky uses a hand-held camera to show her hurry and her instability, instead of following her with a steady-cam. When Nina is dancing, the camera whirls around her, she spins left, the camera goes right. One shot even simulates what a dancer sees when spinning. Aronofsky utilizes all the Indie tricks he learned when doing Pi and Requiem for a Dream (like the sound and the film to indicate mental status) and the sophisticated special effects he used in The Fountain (which I and about 4 other people loved). The effects are amazing. He shows flashes of people or objects as they appear in Nina's head while alternately showing what they really are, so the audience is never really sure if what Nina perceives is really happening or not. The effects take you inside Nina's head, seeing what she sees (or thinks she sees).
Which brings me to the performances. Natalie Portman will be nominated for an Oscar (again) for this role and she will likely win. I hope, anyway. Her quest for perfection in the role of the Swan Queen is what drives her mad. Portman drives this film with a quiet intensity that slowly but surly destroys her. She is very uptight, only knowing or caring about her dancing, which is really her mother's (Barbara Hershey) dream. Nina still sleeps in the same room, with the same decor, as when she was twelve years old and that is how she is treated. She does not understand that Nina is a grown woman now and has never truly lived as one. The other driving force in Nina's life is the company's director, Thomas (Cassel). He is all at once trying to make her a better dancer by pushing her to be less technical and feel the movements and at the same time trying to sleep with her (which he is notorious for). Enter Lily (Kunis). She is a good dancer that is new to the company. She moves with the flow and grace Thomas is trying to draw out of Nina. There becomes a rivalry between the two, sort of. Lily wants to be friends, but Nina believes that Lily just wants to destroy her. Nina is not popular in the company because of her stand-offish behavior. Kunis plays Lily very casually which really benefits the role. She is better than I ever thought she could be. Barbara Hershey, best known for her work in Hanna and her Sisters, Hoosiers and as Mary Magdalene in Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ, plays Nina's mother like someone who fails to realize the passage of time, but only in terms of her daughter. She knows full well that she was never the dancer she wanted to be because she got pregnant with Nina (as the film infers, by the company director). She is living vicariously through her daughter and Nina suffers the consequences of it.
Over all, the film is absolutely mesmerizing. The story itself is a riff on Swan Lake. Everything about the film rings true. Other films have depicted the descent into madness, very notably Anatol Litvak's The Snake Pit from 1948 with Olivia de Havilland and Robert Aldrich's 1962 film What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, but never quite like this. This is a very insular film. Everything that happens either happens to or as a result of Nina. We are never without her. As innovative as Aronosky is, he owes a great debt to Stanley Kubrick for this film. Kubrick was the only person, I thought, that could make a film that was nearly exclusively about one person's reality vs. their perceived reality. Until I saw Black Swan, that is.
This film is not going to elicit the same feelings from everyone. Those without the patience to allow a film to unfold quietly in front of you to one shattering conclusion without a bunch of loud noises and lots of property damage are not going to like this. The film builds from very little to quite a lot over the course of it's 120 minute run time. Some will feel this time more than others. If you have the patience for a snow-ball effect of a plot/performance/film, you should enjoy this immensely.
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