If you love your ballet - stay away!

Rating: 1/10 (22 January 2011)

When a movie is being hyped to a substantial degree, there is always a risk that this is not exactly due to its merit, but rather part of an aggressive marketing campaign. Rarely has such a phenomena been so obvious as prior to the release of 'Black Swan': the media have been up and running about Portman's real-life romance sparked during its filming, plus pondering the chances of 'Black Swan' establishing ballet as a fashion trend. Still, having been partnered with a dancer for a number of years, I couldn't resist the temptation - as a result of which I have to side with those reviewers here who regard it as an utterly pointless affair.
What bothered me slightly were the abundant factual errors in depicting a dance company, although that's where most of the action takes place. Even overlooking the myth of the all-powerful choreographer who can choose his lead at random and at any given time: to have the lead's antagonist being chosen as her substitute almost at the end of the film is a quite unnecessary blunder. Even the friend I was watching the film with asked me if such an important matter were not decided earlier on. Other incoherences were Winona Ryder's character - a lead isn't likely to be fired like that - and Vincent Cassel's character - a choreographer engaging in such rampant displays of sexual harassment wouldn't be likely to make creative director. Add the stereotypical career mom of Portman's stereotypically fretting artiste, plus the stereotypically venomous scheming antagonist, and voilà, there's your assembly of paper-thin characters in a papier-mâché world.
What bothered me more about 'Black Swan' was the excessive use of special effects to drive its already not-quite-so-hard-to-understand message home: feathers growing out of scratches, talking photos and the much-used eye-liner-enhanced demonic expression of the transformed 'Black Swan' made me wish to metaphorically grab Aronofsky by the collar and scream: Enough of this already! I-GOT-THE-PICTURE!!! Stop goofing off and go ahead with the story, g-dd-mm-t! The problem with this being that, had the plot been as straight forward as in Aronofsky's much better 'Wrestler', the runtime would have hardly exceeded 30 minutes.
However, what bothers me most about 'Black Swan' is its complete lack of respect for its subject matter. Hitherto all dance films have somehow attempted to grasp the particular mix of hard work and inspiration this art form demands and presents like no other. Yet although this issue is pretty much the crux of Black Swan's story, it fails to feature a full dance scene; instead, there are snippets of real and imaginary dance-inflicted wounds, and a steady-cam rotating around its star, thereby consciously ignoring the essence of ballet per se: its effect as an ensemble piece. Anybody who has ever seen 'Swan Lake' or any other ballet piece, for that matter, will probably concur that the interaction between dancers is at least as important as their individual talent. 'Black Swan' makes it almost seem as if a lead dancer is something like the star of a Las Vegas show. The only thing missing is Portman smattering a catchy tune out of her shiny black lips.
One may argue that accuracy is not what the film is about, that it is a psychological thriller. But why make use of the black swan/ white swan metaphor of the piece, and then detach the whole story from the piece and the art that inspires it? Even those who liked the film should ask themselves: does this movie really address ballet in any way but that very metaphor? And isn't the whole story revolving around such an obvious analogy completely pointless? Another sign of disrespect to me is the investment of 'Swan Lake', which as a mainstay of classical ballet can be said to be a part of an unquestionable cultural heritage, with a highly cliché and passé Freudian repressed-sexuality-slash-schizophrenia gimmick. Not only is such an approach rather pompous and shallow, but it is also inadvertently funny; the means by which the lead character attempts to relieve herself earned quite a few snickers in the audience I was in. Imagine a 90-minute-film about the sexual symbolism of 'Hansel & Gretel', and you'll get an idea what to intellectually expect, and a conclusion which - I have to concur with a number of other reviews - is painfully easy to figure out.
In short: the most over-hyped and annoying film I've seen in a long time. Definitely not for dance enthusiasts. If you're looking for a psychological thriller in the world of entertainment, try the anime 'Perfect Blue', which judging from Black Swan's style seems to be familiar to Aronofsky. And better dance films? Just pick any of them, from 'The Red Shoes' to 'Billy Elliot' - they all have more to say about the art of and devotion to dance than this one.