Beyond the metaphors

Rating: 10/10 (26 December 2012)

Egocentric but amazing ballet teacher Thomas Leroy "cursed" young and fragile ballerina Nina Sayers into secret depths of her own soul, to find her dark, sensuous and self destructive "I", which is needed for dancing Odille, the Black Swan in Tschaikovsky's Swan Lake.
Numerous personifications, symbols and metaphors in this movie (tuning into black or white colors, the mirrors, Nina's hallucinations, turning into a Swan...) are just telling the story about how fragile can be human's psyche in unstable world like ballet scene is.
This is destructive journey into the soul of a young ballerina, who (I believe because she never known something more valuable than her work and her desire for perfection, and that's all she has now) decides to give up everything for perfection. And what is the price? You will see...
Nina's character and her change throughout movie is perfectly plotted. For example: at the beginning of the movie she wears mostly white/rosy clothes, but more the movie's coming to the end - she is turning "more black", it is a sign that her destructive "I", her psychological disorder showed up and dominated her. Her neurotic mother literally tied her as the way SHE wanted, created from her, at first sight, the perfect, fragile, decent girl, who hides inside the hurricane of repressed sexual desires and feelings of insecurity (that's why Nina's scratches herself, that's why she needs to be perfect, that's why she is obsessed with it - because that's the only thing that she is good in, that she can feel passionate about - without any feeling of guilt), which are put in the light, while she embraces the Black Swan's character. Then - the mirrors creates almost active part of the movie - they don't only complements the scenes, but also tells the story - in every scene there is a mirror or reflecting surface - except one scene - when Nina dances Black Swan. It is not accident, it is intention - Nina is watching into the mirrors, into her soul, while her reflection is often doing something else she does. Her reflection is her dark alter ego, getting out of the hidden place, getting our of the mirror - to completely dominate her.
Before the conclusion, everybody unconsciously knows, how it's going to end. Maybe you didn't like Nina's character, so you didn't feel sorry for her at all. But for me, the ending was really touching.
What more to say about this movie? Well, it's beautifully shot, well directed, well played, the screenplay is brilliant, as is the music and the composition. This is not commercial movie, but it's also not one of those "too artistic films" that's nobody really gets... I can call this real art (I mean real audiovisual, smart at storytelling art which are movies meant to be) for wide range of people. And, oh, it's Natalie Portman life's role, Darren Aronofsky's best film, best movie of 2010... and my second favorite.
The last note - if you don't like heavy psychological thrillers with self - destructive main characters, better don't watch it. But if you like it - you definitely should watch Black Swan. It's, at least for me, perfect movie.