Worth the dance but many missteps along the way.

Rating: 6/10 (6 December 2010)

Mitch Hansch/ movieswithmitch.com Masterful technician Darren Aronofsky follows up his 2008 tortured male athlete film, "The Wrestler", with the female counter piece, "Black Swan". Aronofsky delves deep into the cut-throat world of ballet with its intensely demanding physicality and harsh office politics. Aronofsky casts Natalie Portman in a sure-fire Oscar nomination as the repressed and insecure dancer who finally gets her shot to shine as lead in the production of "Swan Lake". Portman's portrayal of Nina Sayers obsessive strive for perfection that veers into dementia is perfection. I wish I could say the same for Aronofsky's dictatorship..ur.. I mean direction. His overbearing hand frustrated this viewer, keeping me from throwing red roses on stage for "Black Swan" instead merely keeping me from throwing rotten tomatoes.
Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake tells the story of the white swan princess who when she finds love, is betrayed and in her madness, darkly becomes the black swan. The fragile Nina (Portman) can play white swan no problem but tapping into the black swan is. Stage director Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel) and his womanizer reputation casts her believing he can get the black swan from her. When the younger care-free dancer Lily, played with a powerful sexuality from an excellent performance by Mila Kunis, comes onto the scene she becomes Nina's alternate and a constant object for Nina's insecurities. As you can see, Aronofsky is quite literal with his story of Swan Lake. Excellent performances aside, "Black Swan" isn't as interesting as it seems, simply depending on horror-esquire tactics that jar the senses but are hollow in content.
Dance is Nina's life. When asked to introduce herself, she replies "dancer" instead of Nina. Her room is pink with stuffed animals and she's still under the thumb of her supremely oppressive stage mother (Barbara Hershey). Nina is buckling under the pressure and slowly begins a path towards madness. Visions of doppelgangers in the subway show influence from Adrian Lyne's "Jacob Ladder" and vividly horrifying nightmares of physical trauma blur with reality of what is and is not. A bad habit of scratching resurfaces for Nina that her mother hides with some make-up and a controlling clipping of her nails that's ramped up audibly, keeping you on edge. Early on Thomas explains their version of the swan lake will be stripped down and bare. I wish Aronofsky would have done that with the film. Instead, there is an obsessive-compulsive control over every shot, beating us in the face with his style and not letting Portman's harrowing performance take spotlight as much as it should.
Portman is amazing, doing 90% of her own dancing including the spectacular climatic show stopping performance. Aronofsky makes the world of ballet a riveting backdrop which is rarely shown in film. Portman is nakedly intense and brings us along best as she can as she loses herself in Nina's fall but we're manipulated by Aronofsky continually pulling out the horror-laden-madness rug from under us. Her maddening is angering instead of gut wrenching, as it could have been. At the end of Aronofsky's "Requiem For a Dream" we feel the characters' complete loss and we're in despair for them but in "Black Swan" he wanted the outcome to be tragic yet beautiful, however I didn't feel much of either.
Propelled by outstanding performances, none more than Portman's, Aronofsky's "Black Swan" is a dance worth accepting even if it has several missteps along the way.
"This" has several missteps along the way.
﻿John 10:20