If you like masturbation and gore, this is a must-see!

Rating: 2/10 (29 January 2011)

I went to see the Black Swan because I was drawn by the Oscar nominations and the favorable ratings at IMDb. I took my girlfriend and a couple of friends and our impressions were surprisingly coherent. Money bad spent and a loss of time.
I admit it: this movie is not boring. But it doesn't mean it's good. We spent about 5% of the movie laughing, 10% of the movie feeling disgusted and about 40% of the movie wondering whether to leave or not. The only advantage of us staying was the fact that now I can honestly write this review having seen the entire thing.
The movie tries to portray what people are capable of in order to achieve perfection. It revolves around the main character's obsessions, visions and serious psychological problems. But it's done in a way that suggests the creators of this movie weren't really sure about whether this was supposed to be a horror movie or not. Well, I guess it's easier to get the viewer's attention this way. It's much harder to write a good psychological drama than to tape up a bunch of visions, strong sexual scenes and bloody self-mutilations. But wait, it's got Tchaikovsky's music, so it's art, right? Wrong.
The music of course is excellent, but it's one of the film's rare artistic values. I was especially surprised to find out the Black Swan got an Oscar nomination for "Best Achievement in Cinematography". My surprise comes from the fact that most of the time the vision was just shaky and grainy. If this is art, then I guess I'm just not an artistic kind of type.
The few things I liked about this movie were the already mentioned music, Natalie Portman whom I like personally as an actress, and the interesting idea of her changing into an actual swan at the end. But still it's not worth it. The film is tiring for the sake of it, and if it is trying to convey a message, it is doing it in a cheap way.
Finishing words? Don't go. If you like gore, better rent a good horror movie. At least it's not pretending to be art. And it's not so disturbing.