Visually stunning, great acting, thin plot & motivations

Rating: 5/10 (30 March 2011)

As a whole, I think Black Swan is worth seeing because it does deliver some really good acting performances and an interesting work which cannot be easily classified into a single genre. But, in my opinion, it does not warrant some of the reviews as the most amazing thing ever or even in 2010. Basically, these premises are simple: the ingénue who must go through internal hell to perform her role, the possessive stage mother from hell, the pr**ck choreographer who manipulates the players and wants to be Svengali, the rival who threatens to steal it all away. All of these forces are backdrops to the drama playing out in Nina's mind. Arguably little of anything that is seen in the final third of the film is real.
The good: The film is a visual treat. Aside from the obvious black/white contrast, the use of pink/red and green is also very interesting. Each frame is perfectly filmed so that colors, textures, reflections all play a role. All of this play's into Nina's black/white world where everyone is there to study her every move and even every part of her body is invaded by her prying mother, the manipulative choreographer etc. Aronofsky does a good job at avoiding the pat stereotypes: Lily is never a direct rival to Nina except when Nina starts to self-destruct, Thomas is never the seductor he would like to be. This is NOT All About Eve. It is a visualization of the very difficult process and artist goes through and embodies all of the fears and nightmares that performers have. The film brings out some great performances by Portman, Kunis and Hershey and Ryder.
The bad: The motivations in the film are completely not credible. We are to believe Nina has been in a professional ballet company for several years. Yet she comes off as a psychotic Marsha Brady afraid about the school play. She would have had experience being on stage, probably has lost/gained numerous other major roles. As part of an ENSEMBLE company, different people would play leads at different times. There is not just ONE big star. So we have Nina going completely insane over this role which she would not have been given anyway. And the Black/White swan thing? Um, you could have 2 dancers play the 2 swans. It's been done. But she goes completely off her rocker and then at the end claims, "It was perfect." Well, it really wasn't. If she did fall in the first part, the performance was not perfect. Most of all, being a performer means doing a great performance night after night and also showing up at parties for the business end of it, but she supposedly killed herself, so in this way too, she was not perfect and failed.
Aronofsky really goes overboard with all of the special effects. She's nuts and crazy, we get it. No need for her to pull her finger off 5 times or bleed out of various orifices or see herself in the mirror. Every hackneyed CGI horror movie trick is tried. And that famous lesbian scene? It wouldn't be that that would generate a huge buzz and drive up box office, right?
There are other ridiculous plot points, like the 2nd is named the day before the big show? Nina's the big star, does all her make-up, supposedly murders someone, and hops onto stage with 1 minute to spare? Or she's sick on opening night, but no one bothers to call her and find out what is going on? There is zero emphasis on the other characters in the ballet. Worst of all, we see very little actual dancing in the movie. We see bits and pieces of things, but never a whole piece. We never see her in a rehearsal to be the black swan. Not a very good homage to ballet.
My biggest complaint is that you leave the theater not particularly satisfied: either it is about the unbalanced woman who kills herself over a role or it is all an allegory about the artistic process and the "death" of a woman's vulnerability and innocence. So you walk away seeing something visually stunning but don't take away much more. There is really no big lesson on the human condition, just the tragic story of a tormented girl who failed under pressure.