High minded schlock

Rating: 5/10 (26 November 2011)

This film would have you believe that it is a high-minded meditation on art, the ego, and mental illness. However, if you polish a turd, it's still a turd. Same goes for this movie. It might look nice and deal with some important topics and seem quite serious, but to me, this was high-minded schlock.
Nina (Natalie Portman) is a repressed, reserved ballet dancer. She wants the chance to perform in "Swan Lake" and the troupe director, Thomas (Vincent Cassel) tells her that he can't see her playing both the black and the white swan. She takes extraordinary measures to convince him to cast her. She can't seem to embody the darker side of the role, however, and ultimately her drive to convincingly tap into her darker side drives her over the edge. On the way she rivals Lily and it seems her mother (Barbara Hershey)'s intense drive for her to succeed comes from the fact that she sacrificed her own career when she gave birth to Nina. Nina and her mother clash as Nina comes out of her shell in trying to capture the nature of the Black Swan. Nina also has a love-hate relationship with her alternate Lily who may have it out for Nina.
There is an awful lot of C-grade melodrama in this and while there certainly is some rivalry and dysfunction in the arts, the depiction of the ballet world seems very stereotypical and grounded in the broadest stereotypes about the arts. Aronofsky seems to wallow in the notion of the cattiest rivalries, the shrillest stage mother, the most fragile of divas, and the douchiest of directors. I could see Nina's fate from a mile away and it really is a shame that this movie had to be so sensationalistic. Aronofsky made a fantastic film in "Reqiuem for a Dream" but here he indulges the lowest of beliefs about the art world. Depicting artists as mentally fragile and grasping is a low-end way of depicting this world and it's a shame because Aronofsky is a talented filmmaker.
I thought Mila Kunis was very good in this film. She very much fit the part created for her. She seemed very at east in it. I thought Portman's character was rather one note and while Portman was not bad (she's incapable of being bad) I didn't think this was one of her more noteworthy performances. I enjoyed the music but this was truly a very self-indulgent picture made by Aronofsky and for my money, extremely overrated.