Film Of The Year?

Rating: 10/10 (30 December 2010)

Go to www.thewildbore.com for this and more reviews
Probably like many of you out there, I walked into this film not really knowing if I was going to like it. I love Aronofsky, even The Fountain which a lot of people hated I still hold in high esteem. His brave filmmaking defies convention, pushes boundaries and he always gets top performances from his cast. However, the trailer is somewhat misleading. Is it a thriller? A drama? Even a horror? But then, all these genres have filled his works in the past (apart from The Wrestler), it's hard to label it, which is all part of the magic. Even the Russian-inspired posters look amazing and will grace many a wall in the future of young trendies I'm sure. But the main point of issue however was really the fact it was about ballet and to be matter-of-fact about it, I know sweet FA about ballet. Fortunately, it doesn't matter and I have never been so enthralled by a film of this nature.
To put it simply, the story focuses on young Natalie Portman as Nina, a ballet dancer who is trying her hardest to win the Swan Queen part in a new vision of Swan Lake but she just cannot exhibit the passion of the Black Swan. Her slow, torturous journey into the dark realms of her psyche uncover more than just passion and soon we start to question reality as we travel alongside her.
Aronofsky does his typical European 70's 'amateur' 16mm style film- making that uses a lot of handicam, jump cuts, shaky, 'realistic' shots that make us feel like we are part of the action, that we are part of Portman's character, an extension of her consciousness. She is so innocent, so child-like that the idea that she has to play a dark, seductive monster through movement of her body alone seems unrealistic but Vincent Cassel as Thomas believes in her, he sees something, a darkness she keeps hidden. Like pretty much all of Aronofsky's work, the human body is an important factor in his films, whether it's sexual, violent, or through expression - everything counts, and in Black Swan, it's here in spades.
Portman plays rather an understated, muted yet remarkable performance as Nina gets to grip with her role. There's so much going on here, said in so little, that it's hard to express unless you've seen it. We all know that ballet dancers are known for having eating disorders, putting their body through unbearable pain, often resulting in a child-like appearance and Portman, at her thinnest and youngest, is going through all this to be perfect. She's an obsessive compulsive which doesn't help either and her child-like appearance is often reflected in her demeanour. She doesn't like talking about sex, she has an overbearing mother, no friends, works too hard and has a melancholiness that is hard to relate through words. We know she has a history of self-abuse and that her mother (who is creepy to say the least) is living her dancing dream through her daughter, that the other girls don't really like her but what is truly frightening is that by opening the pandora's box of restrained emotions, it's making her go insane. This isn't really a drama, it's a psychological horror that I think will make a lot of cinema-goers uncomfortable and shock them, but in a positive way.
Nina is taking over from Winona Ryder in the main Swan Lake part, but it's a position Ryder's character is somewhat reluctant to leave. As a result of this, Cassell tells us that by being self-destructive, by being that passionate, is what perfection is about, it is what makes Ryder's character such a joy to watch, and he constantly drives the point home in that she must lose control to really give a great performance, that you can spend all your time learning the moves but without that soul, it's meaningless. However, she is trying her best to stay in control of losing control because her world is crumbling around her, she is literally being corrupted in front of our very eyes.
Throughout all this, she feels pressure that Mila Kunis' character Lily is ready to jump into her shoes at any minute. She knows that Lily's care-free, easy, passionate attitude is something Cassell wants in the Black Swan performance, and in fact Lily soon becomes a representation of the dark side of Nina, and it's this dark side that is so tempting ...
More on www.thewildbore.com