A movie about the dark side inside of us, about sacrifice and the pursuit of perfection

Rating: 8/10 (3 January 2011)

At the beginning you think this is a movie about the world of ballet...I mean,the title is "Swan lake", it's about ballerinas who toil and struggle to be discovered, to be stars, to be perfect. But then you watch on, and you can't stop, and at the end of it you realize that there is so much more about this movie. Whoever has watched the ballet Swan Lake will know that it is not THAT difficult to be the white swan and the black swan...no, it's not really THAT the key point of the movie, it's actually about accepting your dark side, your deepest darkest desires and fantasies and finding a balance with your normal, "good" side. Because this dark side is also a part of you, who cannot be denied or suppressed, and without which you are incomplete. And a person, especially an artist, cannot achieve greatness if he is only half a person. This is the powerful and somehow scary message of the movie. Scary, because it means to accept loosing control sometimes, which can be quite frightening if you're a control freak and a perfectionist (like Nina is). This is why "the only person standing in your way, is yourself". I'm sure Freud would have been in raptures over this movie!
Natalie Portman is brilliant, superb, natural and terrifying...if she doesn't win an Oscar for this then all those guys in Hollywood are idiots! She plays so well that you sometimes forget this is a movie, you have the impression this is like a documentary of a ballerina's life. Her frigidity, her stress, her fear of failure, of letting everyone down, her struggle to keep her dark side under lock and key like a beast, are perfectly authentic. Not to mention her relationship to her mother, the typical parent living through its child, putting thus a heavy burden on its shoulders.
A brilliant movie, but I have the impression that it needs a certain type of audience. Some people will take it perhaps only as a horror movie or some Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde variation...which is a pity because the movie is a small jewel of human psychology.
PS incidentally, I watched the ballet Swan lake a few weeks before seeing this movie...strangely, I had the impression that the prince was doing everything perfectly, but that he was superficial and lacked the "feeling" of his character..however, the dark wizard had such a magnetism about him and such a powerful presence on stage I was actually glad that at the end he defeated the prince!! Maybe the ballet dancer playing the Prince should watch this movie...