Superb psychological film with Natalie's breakthrough performance

Rating: 9/10 (25 February 2011)

At first, I don't have any interest on watching this film. 'Black Swan' looking at the title made me thinks of a boring movie on ballet performances on Swan Lake. However, as this movie received critical acclaim, and the main cast, Natalie Portman getting praises for her role, and the movie received nominations for best picture, best actress, etc in Oscar, and so I decided to watch it, after listening to my friends' feedbacks on it. Everything is just good! So off I go!
It is a movie about a production of Swan Lake that requires a ballerina to play both the innocent White Swan and the sensual Black Swan. One dancer, Nina (Portman), is a perfect fit for the White Swan, while Lily (Kunis) has a personality that matches the Black Swan. When the two compete for the parts, Nina finds a dark side to herself. Natalie Portman's acting in the film is brilliant and natural. Her performance really bring us, the audiences into the film until it is like we shared the same feeling as she does, and get fully affected by her character. If the Oscar doesn't give her the Best Actress, I'm going to seriously boycott the awards. She truly deserved it. Her acting impressed me a lot, the best of the year for a female cast. I would like to praise her for her commitment to this movie by learning ballet dance which is very difficult.
I heard that there are a number of scary or frightening scenes in the movie. After I have watched it, this movie is not a horror-based film, but it is a psychological-thriller one. It plays with mind, just like the movie 'Inception' (on dreams) but in total different approach, this time being targeted to the only leading character, Nina by Natalie Portman. The first half of the movie seems a bit boring to me, with plot gets dragged, but as soon as the dark side of her prevails on the second half, everything goes interesting and exciting, fast-paced and I can consider 'epic' especially when she finally performed the Black Swan very well.
The story goes a bit complicated, which I already expected once a movie is about dealing with mind. Nina is fantasizing a lot (or I should say hallucination) of her friend, Lily, her director, Thomas, her predecessor, Beth and even of herself which she is definitely frightened of it. So in the middle, I am even blurred by which scenes are real, which are not. Finally, at the end, I understood the whole thing, and well, it ended beautifully, for me even though we do not know the fate of Nina who is injured (sorry for a bit of spoiler). The last phrase she said is immensely breathtaking; 'I felt it. Perfect. I was perfect.' before the screen goes black.
There are also quite a number of disturbing scenes in the movie as Nina has to be dirty-minded and be seductive to perfect her role as Black Swan. I'm already expecting some parts will be cut out of the movie in Malaysia, but I'm happy with it as only a bit of these disturbing scenes are removed (the middle process removed with the beginning and end process still shown) The audiences would still know what the scenes are intending to tell us. There is one foreigner (quite an old lady) sitting beside me, and she is like really disturbed with those scenes. Finally, it's a great piece of work, by the directors, producers and the casts. Out of 10 points, I would rate this one 7.9. It is a very good movie, but sorry, it is still not best enough to get Best Picture in Oscar or even in my opinion.