How do you destroy a ballet thriller? Start by hiring Darren Aronofsky, continue by casting non-dancers.

Rating: 2/10 (26 December 2010)

We fought our way through the season's first serious snow storm in New York to see BLACK SWAN, much praised (in some quarters) for reasons which I can only conclude have something to do with the silent movie style reliance on close-ups - one gathers a Darren Aronofsky trademark - to disguise the fact that this "ballet" film has almost no actual dancing except in the background because the leads *can't* - getting there and home again was the fun part. For anyone with any actual frame of reference either in the ballet or modern film, the movie was simply dreadful.
A conflation of the *worst* parts of THE RED SHOES performed without actual dancers (three minutes of details of ballerinas working on their toe shoes do NOT equal 30 seconds of actual DANCE) and a very bloated "Twilight Zone" episode, I would ONLY recommend this film to parents who would prefer to drive their children to therapy rather than have them take up ballet, or to hard up straight men and lesbians who want to see "respectable" pornography (it is R rated for extended segments here no respectable gay man should be forced to watch as well as "violent content, language and some drug use"). Seriously: years ago I found "Deep Throat" and "Behind The Green Door" *significantly* less offensive.
The basic story of the artist so totally wrapped up in her role she loses herself with tragic consequences is perfectly valid - Carlos Saura did it with a flamenco CARMEN in a 1983 Spanish film brilliantly and even Isaac Asimov used the idea of the curse of a "perfect" performance as the basis of one of his more memorable short stories. With competent writing and direction, it could make a *thrilling* film or even stage musical, but under Aronofsky's close up direction, the screenplay by three separate hands raises all sorts of potential issues without resolving ANY of them. Is the choreographer a monster trying to seduce the virginal Portman or merely trying to get a performance out of her? Is Portman being drugged by an ambitious rival in the corps de ballet or perhaps her own jealous mother or is she merely having a mental breakdown under the pressure of her big break and the artist's quest for "perfection"? WE'LL never know, and once he's convinced the shallow that he's "serious" by raising the issues, Aronofsky doesn't seem to care - competent suspense, surrealism and even Grand Guignol macabre are not merely the incomprehensibility and bad behavior drained of the inherent beauty of his subject that Aronofsky gives us.
Even beyond the core plot indignities Miss Portman's character is forced to endure, apparently unprofessional behavior which would never be allowed to pass at Lincoln Center (where the film is set) is consistently given a pass - or is it part of the actress' delusion or the director's conceit? The choice *as presented* in this movie is not sophisticated or even surrealistic, it is simply lazy film making - writing, direction and acting. Worst of all, the film is dishonest even to its own story telling. Portman's flirting with "perfection" in her official performance is early destroyed in her first act on stage and the supposed perfection of her act two "Black Swan" is rendered physically impossible by the director's final (and ludicrously drawn out) "coup de theatre." That is simply bad movie making.
Even the MUSICAL direction is poor, frittering away the great Tchaikovsky themes in Clint Mansell's lame adaptation which rarely was allowed to soar except in the movie title segment of the actual performance of SWAN LAKE (leads only shown from the chest up) to help give the impression Ms. Portman's acting is supposed to, and scared far less than even middling work in an average Hitchcock film. (Hitchcock could have made a corker of a thriller out of this mishmash - just add the detail that the director had poisoned the lipstick the girl steals.) Anyone who thinks this is "outstanding" really does need to check out an even middling ballet film like THE TURNING POINT (of *course* it was melodrama, but hot without resorting to pornography, the dancing was REAL and you could care about the characters!).
If you don't think the present producers are fully aware of the quality of their work, look at the ads in Sunday's papers (26 December 2010) touting the movie as "WINNER" of 19 separate "Critics' Choice," Golden Globe" and "Screen Actors' Guild" Awards - but in dishonest, almost disappearing print *half* the size of the word "winner" is the word "nominations". They haven't won a single award yet - and if god respects the arts, they never will. (Since this was written, Ms. Portman has been given an award or two for her "acting" which can only be a devastating comment on her competition and "the voters." For those who understand that acting is more than just appearing angst ridden, this is mere scenery chewing.)
I *will* say that the theatre was nearly full (to my surprise given the snow storm already in full progress), and afterward I heard as many people bubbling "how great" it was as grumbling that it was the "worst piece of crap" they had ever seen. At $13 a ticket for the early show some people have to defend the expenditure even to themselves. When out on DVD, the film's failings as a surreal thriller will doubtless be more tolerable reduced to the small screen, and no serious artistic values will be lost. I'd probably raise my rating to an overly generous 4 as a failed attempt at ballet based Grand Guignol, but it's still a basically bad movie that would be relegated to the "midnight" trash circuit if it didn't have a major studio behind it.