A Bit Over-hyped, But Still a Solid Film

Rating: 8/10 (11 January 2011)

A ballerina (Natalie Portman) finally gets the big break in Swan Lake as the swan queen. But she starts having mental breaks where her personality shifts more from the white swan to the black swan.
The way this film has been hyped as an Oscar film is unfortunate. I just do not see that level of power here. Natalie Portman (playing Nina Sayers) is deserved of a best actress nomination and probably a win, and deserves one for her devotion to the role and the injuries she took during training and filming.
Winona Ryder absolutely deserves a supporting actress nomination for her role as Beth Macintyre, and perhaps even the win. Ryder had her glory days in the early and mid-1990s, but I do not think she was ever taken seriously as an actress. While her part in this film is small, I think it is her best work to date.
Mila Kunis plays Lily the understudy. I have a personal love of Kunis, and think she is gorgeous. How strong her acting is, I do not know, and I hate to say it, but she may have been the weak point of the entire film and one of the reasons I cannot see giving it a "best picture" nomination. How she is getting supporting actress nominations from various organizations is beyond me.
Director Darren Aronofsky has a respectable career, starting with such critical successes as "Pi" and "Requiem for a Dream". Both of these films I feel is better than "Black Swan". Some people love "The Fountain" while others find it pretentious. I lean more towards the latter. And even here, with "Swan", I think he borders on the pretentious. There is a fine line between making art and making high-minded bull, and this film teeters on that line.
Although I do not think it is as great as some see it, at least I do not hold some sort of intestinal hatred for it like Steve Erickson, the critic for "Gay City", does. He says the film has "over-the-top combinations of bombastic music, shakycam, and quick editing" with "all the soul of a Skinemax exercise". He finds the film "not very enjoyable to watch", in part because "Aronofsky has no gift for eroticism" and "seems to see sex as a necessary but degrading part of human experience." Erickson is quite wrong, but this becomes obvious the moment he admits that he finds "Requiem" to be "irritating" and never saw it all the way through. What sort of critic can judge a director whose works he has no stomach for?
If you do not see this film, I do not think you are missing out. However, it has some strong points and anyone who is a fan of Aronofsky really needs to check this out. That, or if you want to see an emaciated Portman being a sexual creature... but if that is all you watch it for, you are missing the point.