The Most Beautiful and Spellbinding Film of 2010

Rating: 10/10 (6 December 2014)

On the first day of 2011, I saw the best movie of 2010. Black Swan is an incredible artistic achievement. It is one of the most beautiful, most engaging, and at times scariest movies I have ever seen. It's like The Shining meets A Beautiful Mind meets Basic Instinct filtered through the splendor and precision of the ballet.
The story involves Nicole (Natalie Portman), a dancer with a prestigious ballet company, who dreams of getting her big break. This comes when she is cast as the swan queen in Swan Lake. She is perfect to play the pure, fragile white swan, but the sensuous, seductive black swan comes to be her downfall. She begins to lose all self control, falling into a world of drugs, alcohol, and wild parties. Worse, she comes to identify too closely with her role, until she can no longer tell reality from illusion. And her fears and insecurities develop into full-blown paranoia, centered on new girl Lilly.
Nicole's descent into madness is both frighteningly real and unreal. Some of her hallucinations are as fantastic and surreal as anything in a Salvador Dali painting. Others blend so seamlessly with reality that I am still unsure whether certain scenes actually took place or were all in her head. And this is part of what makes Black Swan so stimulating, the inability to trust the veracity of even the most explicitly laid out scene. The way she is sucked into her role is also strikingly like the true story of Jeremy Brett, who after four seasons of playing Sherlock Holmes came to believe that he was the great detective.
Black Swan also makes clear the pressure to excel and the jealousy that pervades the world of ballet, and the strain this places on the dancers. Nicole's cracked and bleeding nails, and stiffness and popping of her joints bear witness to the physical toll her profession takes on her. Harsher is the psychological and emotional impact of constantly striving for perfection. Gossip and sideways glances abound in the dressing room, much of it directed at whoever has the best role. And even more intense is fear of losing your position, and utter despair when this day comes.
This movie is also stunning to look at. The costumes, the sets, the photography, and the editing are all gorgeous. It also doesn't hurt that the screen is graced by Natalie Portman, who besides being one of the most beautiful actresses of her generation is also, based on her performance here, one of the most talented. She portrays the earnest, frigid good girl and the obsessed, hyper sexualized diva with equal convincingness. We in the audience sympathize with her plight, and mourn what is happening to her. It will be a shame if Portman does not win best actress for her work in this film.
I must caution you that Black Swan has earned its R rating in every way possible. There is strong language, disturbing images of blood and injuries, and some drug use. There is also pervasive sexuality, perhaps more than is needed, as in the explicit lovemaking between Nicole and Lilly.
But there is no denying that Black Swan is a truly great work of cinema, an absolute masterpiece of tension and paranoia. And the ending, with Nicole's tragic performance as the swan queen, is simply beyond words. If I live to be a hundred I will never lose the images of what happens in those moments. It stirred something inside me that I have not felt since watching the final shootout in Taxi Driver. As the screen faded and the credits rolled, I was completely blown away. And as I left the theater and got into my car, I realized I was trembling. If you care about great cinema, you must see Black Swan.