If filmmakers know what they're doing, they understand that SUBTLETY is everything

Rating: 10/10 (29 December 2010)

If the audience is observant enough, and if the filmmaker masters every moment available in front of the camera (mis en scene, dialogue, etc.) then the cinematic experience will be far more than enjoyable. This review is more like an analysis; more like tips on how you might interpret viewing this film.
Natalie Portman's role as Nina is flawless if she set out to convey an innocent, naive, yet spiritually distraught female who puts her work before her well-being. But more than her work is her love for her mother: like a defeated puppy who upsets the master, Nina squints every time she feels an urge to be herself. If this is what Aronofsky wanted of Portman, then hand her the Oscar. We see a broken woman in front of a mirror, reflected in different angles, portraying a divided human being. The camera follows Nina behind her, viewing nothing but the back of her head and maybe a foot or two beside her, and far into the distance in front of her in a blur. What does this mean? That we are following a woman who wishes to see nothing around her (why? I took it as because she was fearful of her surrounding). She sees her own face on the bodies of other women, fearing that her own worst enemy is staring her down, waiting for her to fail. This leads to paranoia, and inevitably insanity. Like I said before, if all of this was meant as such, then Portman and Aronofsky did a beautiful job. So when the end came it is no wonder one is drowned in a flood of emotions. Sympathy turns to compassion, turns to despair, turns to relief.
Since the story is told especially through Nina's eyes, all the characters in the film merely reflect her psyche. They do not have their own personal lives because however they come into the film is just a reflection of how Nina feels about them, and therefore herself. I have nothing to complain about the performances. I even have to congratulate them for being exactly what the film needed them to be. Especially the mother, who (as it seemed to me anyway) hid beneath her a painful interior of regret seeking redemption, but doing it in all the wrong ways through suppressing her daughter's potential not as a dancer, but as a woman, and thus a human being.
The score leads the audience into the territory where the film wants you in. In one instant you will be enjoying the beauty of ballet, and the next will be concerned whether what you just heard was real, and therefore are experiencing exactly what Nina is. For me, music is a guide, a leader to follow. The better hold music has on you, the more deeper into its atmosphere you'll find yourself in-- whether pleasurable or terrifying. Clint Mansell accomplishes both.
All in all, one needs to ask, What does a movie need to do for it to accomplish 10/10? Pessimists will say that nothing deserves a perfect score; so in their view their favourite viewing experiences deserve 9/10. So what about that tenth star? Does it exist merely as the impossible carrot to chase? No, that tenth is there to congratulate the whole film cast for making such a cinematic experience that it doesn't set itself as a great movie, but it reflects the necessity of which is in everyone-- that being, Let go and Give in to your darker nature.