Black Swan (2010)

The front-runner for this year’s “messy masterpiece” award is BLACK SWAN, auteur Darren Aronofsky’s ballet thriller starring a give-her-the-Oscar-now-dammit Natalie Portman as a stressed-out ballerina whose landing of the lead role in “Swan Lake” becomes both her career’s apex and her undoing. A film that I can only compare in terms of feeling to the way I felt after watching “There Will Be Blood” a few years ago, I think this is going to play itself out to be a rather polarizing film. I know of a few people who have seen it multiple times and have heralded it as a work of genius. I know others who found it so melodramatic and ridiculous that they couldn’t handle it.

So where am I on BLACK SWAN? It’s a testament to the ingenuity of Aronofsky, I think, that I’m not yet quite certain myself. That I would be struggling with what I saw so long after seeing it certainly means the film merits such debate and study. For many reasons, BLACK SWAN is a worthy entry in a very promising career of a modern auteur. And for many more reasons, it is a spectacular mess of a film, a one-tone shocker with a script that pays little attention to the need for some kind of reality as grounding.

Both the script and the visuals of BLACK SWAN are populated with clear symbolisms. Nina Sayers (Portman) is a replacement for a soon-to-retire ballerina, played by Winona Ryder. A new dancer, Lily (played by Mila Kunis), threatens to be a replacement for Nina. And then there’s Nina’s mother, Erica (Barbara Hershey), who once danced herself and now uses her daughter as a sort of dancing avatar/replacement for her now-ended career.

Then there’s the color duality of black and white, a little obvious but simpatico with the story and the production of “Swan Lake” itself. Thomas Leroy, the egotistical man who is staging the ballet, messes with Nina to toughen her up but tells her flat out that while he buys her as the White Swan, he doesn’t see her pulling off the Black Swan alter-ego required of her in the ballet. Nina is all technical, a seeker of perfection in her performances unable to cut loose and simply feel.

Like many young woman seeking the unobtainable (perfection), Nina self-injures. As if the rigors of ballet weren’t punishment enough on her frail body, she rips her cuticles and scratches herself. This detail is a very real touch, but one of the last real details in the film before it gets all wacky. When Lily shows up, the story goes all “Single White Female.” Nina is threatened by her presence, convinced that Lily is going to take her role from her. This, too, is realistic in the world of performers. It’s the whole “All About Eve” thing, and it’s a story that’s been told before.

But then Lily starts trying to get chummy with Nina. And for a little while, Nina gives in. And once this happens, Nina goes off the deep end, and so does Aronofsky. The final 30 minutes of the film—the details of which I won’t spoil here—are batshit crazy. The film becomes a game of “which moments really happened and which were imagined,” which is a tactic far beneath a director of Aronofsky’s talents.

If BLACK SWAN does anything with undeniable brilliance, that would be its stunning sense of tone. Aronofsky establishes a sense of suspense right away, and that suspense is visceral. I can honestly say I thought I’d soil myself on numerous occasions, and damn-near screamed out loud more than once while watching it. Only the arm-chopping-off scene in “127 Hours” comes anywhere close to this level of intensity in a film this year. BLACK SWAN literally gets your heart rate up.

But while I can praise this intensity, I also feel a bit critical of it. So consistent is its tone—a sustained two hours of frightening suspense—that the film lacks levels. And worse, it begins to descend into horror film clichés, such as the lead actress quickly turning her head with a gasp after looking in a mirror to reveal who is or isn’t there, and spooky low-end notes on a piano to signify scary moments. I can’t say I saw many of the jumpy moments coming, and that’s a credit to the film. But I can say that many of the techniques used to shock bordered on campy.

One of the film’s biggest WTF devises is its use of CG graphics in a few key scenes toward the end of the film. They are clearly intended to be a part of Nina’s increasing hallucinations and instability, but they also, I think, turn BLACK SWAN into “The Fly.” I don’t want to spoil it by being more specific; if you see the film, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about immediately upon seeing it.

As mentioned before, Natalie Portman is stunning. I worry that not enough people will fully appreciate what she clearly had to do to prepare for and live in this role. She clearly lost weight – an already skinny girl reduced to a wisp of a thing here. And she also learned ballet dancing, which is no small feat. This in addition to the acting itself, which is intense and exceptional. She deserves, I think, every award that is currently heading her way. It’s the female acting performance of the year.

Matching her in intensity is the work of both Kunis and Hershey, and were this not such a damn strong year for female supporting performances, both would get Oscar nominations. That said, I suspect that one of them still will, and it will probably be Kunis, because she gets more screentime, freaks the audience out more, and does a lesbian love scene.

It should also be noticed that few critics are saying much about Vincent Cassel as the manipulative ballet director, but he is great here, too: seductive, sexy, charming and coldly controlling.

For all of the choices Aronofsky makes as a director with BLACK SWAN that drove me crazy, there are some that I think are brilliant. All of the film’s dance sequences are exquisitely shot with tight camera work that floats and spins as if the camera is dancing, too. While I sometimes dislike this kind of flashy intrusion, it is fitting and wonderful here. Aronofsky shot this film with handheld cameras just as he did his last picture, “The Wrestler,” and the similar choices he makes here with a camera that follows the subject closely and often from behind help to establish the director’s consistency in style. Some have criticized the similarities, but I think similarities between a director’s films are a good thing! They indicate that a director has an identity. We are now getting to the point where it is easy to identify what an Aronofsky film looks like and, quite possibly, what its themes are.

All of these compliments aside, I cannot fully forgive, much less wrap my brain around, the film’s final act. Like I said before, it’s simply nuts. It’s nuttier than Daniel Day-Lewis’ bowling scene at the end of “There Will Be Blood.” And while the chain of events maintains that ridiculous level of intensity, Aronofsky discards any desire for the audience to have some clearly-discernable reality to use as narrative grounding, to distinguish from Nina’s paranoid delusions. What happens works as a figment of her paranoia, but the lines blur and then, explode. Ultimately, I’m left feeling impressed by the film’s sustained sense of intensity more than I care about the characters.

BLACK SWAN is worthy of much praise, though I would probably stop short at any kinds of rewards for its daffy script. But no matter how ridiculous I thought this was, I doubt you can watch BLACK SWAN without at least admitting that it is shockingly riveting. It’s the kind of mess you don’t mind watching, and movies today could use a few more of those.

3.0 out of 4