Where does reality begin and dreams end?

Rating: 10/10 (25 June 2012)

Black Swan is the dizzying, intoxicating hallucinatory masterpiece that swept critics and audiences away alike in 2010. It recalls a similar film released a decade earlier, "Mulholland Drive", in that it is a dreamlike tale of achieving perfection, madness and two beautiful women with opposing personalities (i.e. good vs. evil, introverted vs. extroverted). If you want to go back further, Black Swan is akin to the work of Polanski, mostly "Repulsion" and "Rosemary's Baby". It even has some parallels to a 1997 Japanese anime thriller called "Perfect Blue". But it still succeeds as a work of its own thanks to a tour-de-force performance by Natalie Portman, who won her much deserved Oscar for her role as Nina, a ballerina hell- bent on mastering her turn in The Swan Lake ballet where she plays the dual role of the White Swan and the Black Swan. The situation is complicated with the arrival of an uninhibited new dancer who seems to have no trouble attaining the sexual, dark side of the black swan that Nina seems to lack and need so desperately. Things get quite creepy, dark and weird fairly quickly from that point onwards as Nina loses her tenuous grip on reality.
Black Swan succeeds, like I previously stated, from its excellent performances, but also from the direction of Darren Aronofsky, who shoots New York City as a menacing, claustrophobic city and makes Nina feel particularly small amongst the monolithic skyscrapers. The cinematography is icy and beautiful, and the deep blacks and whites are contrasted by the beautiful, rich pinks, reds and blues. Detractors have attacked Black Swan for being unoriginal and clichéd. Pulp Fiction was not entirely original now, was it? Every film borrows elements from other films, and it's quite clear that Black Swan is borrowing, not stealing, because it stands on its own two feet with a highly original premise. Dopplegangers, femme- fatals, body metamorphosis and other such themes are not unique to one particular film, and that's why Black Swan isn't a knock-off. It may use familiar tropes but it still does them in a refreshing, entertaining way.
I highly recommend this film. It contains many elements that help propel it from being good, to great.