Perhaps the first great cinematic masterpiece of the 2010s

Rating: 10/10 (4 March 2011)

In the ballet world it has become the custom for the two leading female roles in Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake", Odette the White Swan and Odile the Black Swan, to be danced by the same ballerina in order to allow her to reveal two different sides of her personality, Odette being innocent and ethereal, Odile evil but sensual and sexually fascinating. "Black Swan" tells the story of a new production of "Swan Lake" by a leading New York ballet company and the rivalry between two young dancers, Nina and Lily, who both covet the role of Odette/Odile. The director, Thomas Leroy, casts Nina in the role, although he has doubts as to her suitability. She is perfect as the White Swan, but Thomas fears she lacks the sensuality needed to portray the Black Swan, a role to which Lily seems more suited. (I found myself wondering why Leroy, who clearly sees himself as an iconoclast, did not simply cast two different dancers in the two roles, but this would obviously have been a step too far for ballet traditionalists).
Nina's problem is that she is too emotionally repressed to portray the Black Swan convincingly. She is a virgin who does not have a boyfriend and lives with her controlling, overbearing mother Erica, herself a former dancer who never quite made it to the top and who has projected her own unrealised hopes onto her daughter. Thomas criticises Nina's dancing as "frigid", and this is as much a criticism of her personality as of her dance style. Gradually, however, Nina begins, under Thomas's guidance, to explore the darker and more sensual sides of her character and her dancing begins to improve.
Nina's success, however, is only achieved at great personal cost. The emotional stress of the role begins to affect her health, both physical and mental, leading to eating disorders, self-harm and to hallucinations. Nina becomes obsessed with Lily, who has been named as her understudy, and with the idea that Lily is trying to usurp her role. Yet her relationship with Lily is a love-hate one; at one stage she hallucinates that she is having a lesbian relationship with the other girl. Or is this something more than a hallucination? Natalie Portman is an actress who has sometimes disappointed me in the past. She was horribly wooden in the "Star Wars" films and not a lot better in "V for Vendetta". In "Black Swan", however, she is superb in the highly demanding role of Nina, a role which required her not only to master the dancing skills of a ballerina but also to convey her character's complex emotional states. Her Best Actress Oscar was well deserved. Mila Kunis is also good as Lily, although this role was perhaps an easier one. Although it demanded just as much hard work on the technical ballet side, Lily is a less complicated character than her rival, naturally sensual and easy-going where Nina is tense and emotionally repressed.
The other performance which impressed me came from Vincent Cassel as Thomas. The relationship between Thomas and Nina in some ways parallels that between Lermontov and Victoria in that other great ballet film, "The Red Shoes". Like Lermontov, Thomas is in love, or in lust, with his protégée, but with an important difference. Lermontov's love for Victoria takes the form of a subconscious desire which he cannot acknowledge to her or even to himself, except in sublimated form. There is nothing sublimated or subconscious about Thomas's desire for Nina; he takes an obsessive interest in her sex-life, encourages her to masturbate and blatantly gropes her while they are dancing together. At the purely technical level his psychological manipulation of Nina succeeds in making her a better dancer, but he cannot see the effect that his methods are having on her already fragile psyche. In a compelling performance Cassel plays him as a strange mixture of inspirational teacher and creepy sexual predator; he was unfortunate not to receive a "Best Supporting Actor" nomination.
Visually, the look of "Black Swan" is very different to that of "The Red Shoes". Pressburger and Powell's masterpiece, made during a period of post-war austerity, was shot in vivid colour. Darren Aronofsky's palette is much more restrained; in keeping with the film's theme the dominant tones are black, white and grey. Bright colours are used sparingly, with the exception of red in a key scene near the end. Aronofsky's direction also uses many shots from unusual angles; it is notable that Portman is frequently photographed from behind or in a mirror, as though her character were hiding something from the audience by turning away from them, thus emphasising Nina's repressed personality. Aronofsky also makes considerable use of ambiguity- the lesbian scene being a good example. The most likely explanation is that it is a hallucination on Nina's part, but it can also be taken as a depiction of something that actually happened, in which case it makes an immense difference to the way in which we perceive both Nina and Lily. The final scene also permits two different interpretations.
"Black Swan" was the first of Aronofsky's films that I have seen, but on this evidence he is a director of enormous talent. It is in my view the greatest-ever film about ballet, greater even than "The Red Shoes", which is high praise indeed. It is a film of great aesthetic, dramatic and emotional power, a power which is enhanced by Tchaikovsky's music on the soundtrack. It is perhaps the first great cinematic masterpiece of the 2010s; although it may be unpatriotic to say so, I would have awarded it "Best Picture" ahead of "The King's Speech" and certainly Aronofsky "Best Director" ahead of Tom Hooper. 10/10