Ballet: No longer just for girls

Rating: 8/10 (1 February 2011)

It's good to be back. After going the entire holiday season without posting a single review, my timing has been lucky enough for me to return at just the right time. Yes, it's awards season again, and regardless of how I personally feel about the Academy (cough, ScorseseandDicapriogotscrewed, cough), they have selected, for the most part, ten quality films as this year's Best Picture nominees. One of these ten is Black Swan, a well-crafted psycho-erotic thriller from Darren Aronofsky, whose impressive resume includes Requiem For A Dream and The Wrestler.
Black Swan follows Natalie Portman's Nina, an ambitious ballerina who has just received the lead role in the company's production of Swan Lake. Of course, she couldn't earn this role without knocking off former top seed turned has-been Beth Macintyre (Winona Ryder). Seeing what Beth has become having had her career inadvertently swept from beneath her, Nina begins to grow increasingly paranoid and insane herself when director Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel, perhaps best known as the Nightfox from the Ocean's trilogy) selects Lily (Mila Kunis) as Nina's 'understudy'.
Portman is virtually flawless, and thoroughly deserves her recent Golden Globe win and subsequent Oscar nomination as Best Actress. While Kunis, as one of Hollywood's up-and-coming actresses since the end of the hugely successful That '70s Show, shows just as much poise, she is given a much smaller workload than expected. Cassel's performance became all the more impressive when I learnt that he based his character on George Balanchine, the co-founder of the NYC Ballet School and 'a control freak, a true artist using sexuality to direct his dancers'. This is a trait his character possesses in spades, and shows the actor's admirable dedication to developing his character past the mould set by the screenplay.
Many people cited many different directors as an influence upon Black Swan. One friend was impressed by the Goddard-esque techniques constantly employed from a cinematic perspective, while the emphasis on a single character driving the plot, rather than the other way around, was not lost on this Scorsese tragic.
At any rate, Aronofsky's multitude of adapted skills converge seamlessly, all working together to form a persistently suspenseful, anxious tone. Indeed, there are some moments in this film that require more brain straining than even Inception, but don't be misled. Where Nolan's masterpiece required constant attention so as to not lose track of the plot, Swan demands the same respect because we, as the audience, are found frequently questioning whether or not what we've been led to believe did in fact happen, or if it's building to something more sinister.
More so than the concepts of artistry, horror or psychology, this is a thematic film. To become perfect in her role, Nina is encouraged to not only personify the delicate and vulnerable White Swan, but also embrace the raw sexuality and primal fear associated with the Black Swan. Instantly, one can recognise how these polarised fictional figures represent what Nina is, and what she is slowly becoming. More importantly, the film acts as a monstrous depiction of how the pursuit of perfection can drive a normal person to utter madness.
*There's nothing I love more than a bit of feedback, good or bad. So drop me a line on jnatsis@iprimus.com.au and let me know what you thought of my review.*