A fascinating and unique film

Rating: 9/10 (17 February 2011)

Something the films directed by the great Darren Aronofsky have in common is the obsession. Independently from what the plot is about, we can be sure that the axis of the story will be the obsession which is devouring a person's life, either if it is in the shape of an impossible mathematical formula (Pi); the addiction (Requiem for a Dream); the eternal love (The Fountain); or recovering past glories (The Wrestler). Now, his most recent film Black Swan follows that thematic tendency, at the same time it brought me a unique and fascinating experience.
I think that Black Swan is a movie which will provoke divisions between the spectators, because while some ones will acclaim it as an excellent film full of deepness, symbolism and emotion, other ones might consider it as an absurd melodrama due to the visual tricks Aronofsky uses in order to portray the unstable mind from the main character. Personally, I belong to the first group, because even though there were a few occasions in which I found the visual tricks to be a bit excessive, I was "hooked" on the film from the very beginning until the end. And something which helped me to that is the extraordinary performance from Natalie Portman. To put it simply, she brings one of the best performances I have ever seen (I am not exaggerating). From the first seconds of the movie, Portman establishes the attitude and personality from her character with an incredible clarity and precision, and as a consequence, we do not need too much dialog or "exposition" in order to understand the hard way she took in order to lead to the New York Ballet, the difficult situation she lives at her house, and the damage the suppression of emotions and natural instincts in her search of perfection provoked on her. Vincent Cassel, Winona Ryder, Mila Kunis and Barbara Hershey also bring solid performances; however, they get a bit darkened by Portman's monumental work.
The only time I have seen ballet live precisely was a staging of Swan Lake, and I was left impressed by the elaborated scenic effects the show was adorned with (I particularly remember a lightning which announced the entrance of an evil sorcerer). Black Swan also employs many special effects, but most of them are subtle and almost invisible, something which makes them to be more disturbing because we are never really sure if we really saw what we think we had seen. That is the general atmosphere from this movie...an ambiguous balance between fantasy and reality, not as opposite extremes, but as fusion of experiences which have to be interpreted by every spectator in order to draw conclusions. That nightmarish tone might be the reason why some people consider Black Swan to be a horror movie; but I think that it would be a mistake to typecast it into a specific niche, because its ambition is superior to belonging into any formula or genre.
And I think that it is not convenient neither to "understand" Black Swan, or to separate the real scenes from the ones which (maybe) take place into the main character's mind, because I feel that the purpose of the movie is for us to feel the confusion, anguish and terror the main character experiences under the intense pressure the different aspects of her life provoke on her, from the horribly competitive world of professional ballet, to the anxiety she feels at her house due to her own insecurities and the influence from her suffocating mother. Aronofsky and Portman can make us "live" that situation with excellent results, and I enthusiastically recommend this movie, because despite not being perfect, it definitely is a great movie.