Don't push it!

Rating: 4/10 (17 June 2011)

You can love or hate Black Swan, but certainly it won't be just another movie. I have to give that to the director, who tries hard (REALLY hard) to show a very sick girl in some sort of beautiful light.
Personally, I found the movie too self-aware and pretentious, pushing the buttons of this unstable main character (Nina, played by Portman) in such an obvious way that it's almost annoying. Sure, a huge amount of pseudo-intellectual viewers are going to find it genius, but in the end, Aronosfky just directed a very elegant version of Saw.
Nina was sick to begin with, pressure didn't crack her at all. We don't have a story; we have a train wreck. Portman did an awesome job like most of the cast of the movie, but the plots urge of being a masterpiece just ruined it from the beginning. The movie shouts out loud 'I'm cooler than you and you should praise me for that'. I'm not sure if it is the script or the directing, but someone is trying just too hard.
Photography was beautiful in a green-ish kind of way. It's cold and uncomfortable in the beginning, but it gives a nice atmosphere for the concept. The screen just lightens up when Kunis (playing Lily, Nina's fellow dancer) appears: She's just a breath of fresh air in a suffocating movie. I'm guessing that that's the idea, but you know, not even a great performances can save a film that lacks humbleness.