Black Swan – Review

In 1998 the world was introduced to twisted mind of Darren Aronofsky with his film PI. Since then we have been hit, movie after movie, with an emotional roller coaster ride that just never seems to let up. With the release of his latest film, BLACK SWAN, Aronofsky does it again.

BLACK SWAN is the story of Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman), who is a prima ballerina in the New York Ballet. For the new season, her troupe is doing Swan Lake. Nina’s dream is to get the lead in the show. Beth Macentire (Winona Ryder) is retiring as the current lead, and Nina sees this as her chance to shine. There is one major obstacle in her way, a new ballerina from Los Angeles, Lily (Mila Kunis). Lily is the complete opposite of Nina. Nina is obsessive and wants to be perfect, while Lily has a more loose style and doesn’t mind being imperfect Even the way they dress, as Nina is bright and is always wearing white, while Lily is always wearing black. Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel), the director of the ballet, says this is what actually makes Lily perfect, her ability to not be perfect and lose herself.

The story of BLACK SWAN is pretty much the same story as Swan Lake. The story arc of the characters in the movie are the same as those in the ballet. Nina being The Swan Queen, Lily being the Black Swan, Thomas is The Gentleman, Beth is The Dying Swan and Erica Sawyer (Barbara Hershey), Nina’s mom, as The Queen. Since the viewer realizes this early on in the film, and the story of Swan Lake is told over and over, we know exactly what is going to happen to each character, or at least we believe we know. Finding out what happens isn’t really the point of the movie, but it’s all about how you get to finale that makes this movie such an amazing film.

Aronofsky weaves a story that we know with the visuals that he’s best known for. Over the 12 years that he’s been making movies, Aronofsky has cemented himself as the new king of body horror. Very much like David Cronenberg’s VIDEODROME, when Nina picks at wounds on her body, we are not sure what is real and what is not. Is the pressure of being perfect getting to Nina? She hears sounds and sees things that aren’t really there. The best thing about these scenes are that the people in her life are there through them, so we the viewer does’t know what’s real and what’s not. This movie has a lot of similarities with Aronofsky’s last movie, THE WRESTLER. This can be seen a great companion piece to that film. One is about what is considered the lowest art form, wrestling, and the other as the highest, ballet. While Mickey Rourke’s Randy is just trying to get by in life, Nina wants everything to be perfect. Even what ends up happening to the characters are parallel.

When viewing this film, the best thing to do would be to leave your emotions at the door. If you don’t you’re going to lose them anyway. This movie was a punch to the gut that the viewer may never recover from. Each performance was amazing, and there should be many awards coming to them. Barbara Hershey was amazing, as this seems to be the year of the crazy mother, along with Jackie Weaver from ANIMAL KINGDOM. Natalie Portman’s performance is Oscar worthy, and Mila Kunis has really turned out to be an amazing actress. This film is just about as close to perfect as a film can get.

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