This is a very well done film in almost every respect, except for the story.

Rating: 9/10 (20 January 2011)

Director Darren Aronofsky knows what he's doing, as does actress Natalie Portman, and pretty much everyone else in this film. These people are artists who take this material and transform it into something beautiful. The script is good too, when it comes to dialogue and character development. But, the real question is, does this plot need to be told? The story of a woman becoming mentally unhinged has been told numerous times before, and in some films (Mulholland Dr.) the story actually was quite similar. Now, I'm not saying we need all original films, because at this point, that's near impossible to find, but the question this film raised was "Why was this made?" Perhaps to show the beauty of the dance, or maybe to show how stressful dance is on the dancers...hard to tell. The simplistic nature of the plot layout bumped this down a notch for me, but it still stands as one of the best of 2010 for every other aspect of the film.
Nina (Natalie Portman) finally is able to live her dream out and play the Swan Princess in her dance company's production of Swan Lake, but she isn't tapping into her dark swan enough. The movie follows this character's descent into darkness, and into insanity.
The performances here were fantastic. Natalie Portman definitely should be a front runner for the Oscar for this one, because she comes off as very believable. Many good actresses would play the role well, but not be able to pull off gaining empathy from the audience. Portman is walking a tight rope here playing a character bordering on irritatingly passive, and then frustratingly aggressive and uncaring, and she still can pull in the audience to care for her, and that's a skill. Mila Kunis gave a fine performance, and Barbara Hershey was good, but the other standout performance was Vincent Cassel as the dance instructor. He's another character that is hard to figure out. Is he a complete jerk, or is he doing what he does for a legitimate reason? Either way, Cassel was great.
The direction was stellar. The staging was excellent, and the camera felt like an actual player in this film. Never did we get static and boring shots. Everything was alive, and the camera-work, staging and direction was a large part of that. In it's own grungy looking way, the film also looked beautiful. It was more gritty than most nowadays, but it gave it an atmospheric style that only worked to help it.
Now, the problem arises in the writing, but not in the dialogue, or the character motivations, or any kind of logic flaw. The dialogue was all natural enough, and the pace flowed nicely. This film just felt like there was nothing to get out of it. Nina wanted perfection, and she was going crazy, with interludes of ballet and talking...that's what this film is. There's very little to it, and perhaps more could have been done with the mental breakdown itself, because here, it just made it look like Nina was crazy from the start, period. And she really had no reason to go insane. She was doing all this to herself. I'm not one who believes films should all have a message, but at least this film should have had a purpose to tell this story. The story itself had very little new in it, though certainly many elements were fresh in it. It's almost like the purpose of this film is to show dancing, and a woman going crazy, and nice choreography along with good music. It's hard to place what makes this film not as great as it could be, but it definitely lies in the plot. It lies in a lack of subtlety in the breakdown itself, and a lack of motivation in the plot. This same plot has been told, and why should we care more this time? Other than this underlying feeling that there needed to be something more, this was an excellent film.
The Black Swan boasts excellent direction, performances, choreography, and an interesting look into our protagonist's very disturbed little mind. The problem with the film is the familiarity of this plot layout, and the lack of anything new to the "woman's mental breakdown" plot (other than the ballet aspect). But, if one can forgive that aspect of the film, then this film does indeed reach near-perfection.
My rating: *** 1/2 out of ****. 105 mins. R for sexuality, violence, drug use and language.