Do believe the Hype (I can't believe I just said that)

Rating: 9/10 (16 October 2011)

I'm always wary when a director I really care about hits it big time cause we've been let down before but Aronofsky actually pulls it off. Nothing here that you haven't seen before one way or the other: A struggling ballet dancer on the verge of her breakthrough; an unhealthy mother-daughter dependency, an alter ego in the shape of a beautiful competitor, an aging star that goes berserk, yet everything about this film comes together beautifully: the script, the acting, the pace, but what I cared about most was the subtle camera-work. For instance, in the grand finale, the opening night of Swan Lake when it's all of nothing for our enduring heroine, the temptation would be to employ a great many camera movements with dolly and cranes and whatnot inter-cut with an awestruck audience when Nina dances her way to towards the climax but Aronofsky resists the temptation and instead relies on a refreshing down to earth approach with hand-held cameras that make you really feel as if you were part of the action. Likewise he avoids all the inevitable clichés with breathtaking finesse. At the core of this lies Nina's madness and the only film I can think of that matches the creepy feel of Black Swan would be Polanski's Rosemary's Baby. How she catches her mirror reflection scratching at her back or the scene where her toes have grown together are just the tip of the iceberg. Natalie Portman does a really great job of portraying this desperately eager dancer. Her intense acting allows Aronofsky to plunge right into the action instead of taking his time to build up the character, thus the film clocks in at a little over 100 minutes, which I find really admirable cause I reckon everyone else had dragged it out at least for 2 hours. Why can't there be more mainstream movies like this.