A Beautiful Nightmare

Rating: 9/10 (28 December 2010)

One would not put the phrases "psychological thriller" and "professional ballet" in the same sentence, but Darren Aronofsky's newest film, Black Swan, allows us to do just that, and a lot more.
Aronofsky, director of Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain, and The Wrestler, once again creates an experience in Black Swan that is visceral, emotional, and captivating from beginning to end. The plot follows a young ballerina, Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) in her quest to win the role of the Swan Queen in director Thomas Leroy's (Vincent Cassel) production of Tchaikovsky's famous "Swan Lake." Leroy has no doubt that Sayers can play the white swan, who is nubile and innocent, but doubts her ability to play the black swan, who is darker, more sexually charged, and less refined. When Sayers wins the role, she feels pressure from her overbearing mother and the demanding director Leroy to enact the "perfect" performance. Added to that pressure is Sayers' suspicion that her alternate, Lily (played by the lovely Mila Kunis of That 70's Show fame) is plotting to take her place and is in fact preferred by the director.
Black Swan takes the viewer inside the often depressing world of professional ballet dancers, where the pressure not only to perform "perfectly" but also to look "perfect" seem to reach incomprehensible levels. Sayers, who is bulimic, another underlying problem in the world of professional ballet, is played wonderfully by the beautiful and ever-maturing Natalie Portman. It should also be noted that Cassel (whose appearance in mainstream cinema is long overdue) and Kunis (who deserves and will likely get more prominent roles in the future) are both perfectly suited for their roles as well. Aronofsky's use of light to depict good and evil is both obvious (at its most basic, contrasting the white and black swans) and subtle (lighting of various scenes, use of mirrors, clothing, etc.) and most importantly serves to clarify Nina's psychological turmoil.
While Portman and Aronofsky serve up a thrilling and troubling final act, the most disturbing character in the film is Nina Sayers' mother, played by Barbara Hershey. The bright, happy, mother-daughter relationship depicted in the first act of the film are nothing more than a guise for what lies just under the surface between these two characters. Hershey plays the role of the over-protective mother to perfection, but her character indeed goes beyond that. By the second act, the viewer has the sense that the mother has also established firm psychological control over Nina, and is living her own (short-lived) ballet career vicariously through her daughter, placing additional pressure on the already deeply troubled Nina.
Despite the outstanding performances by Hershey, Cassel, and Kunis, and perhaps the year's best directing by Aronofsky, the film, and particularly its final act, belong to Natalie Portman. Portman's real talent here is her ability to portray an incredibly wide range of human emotions in a relatively short period of time. The viewer not only sees but even feels her obsession, her pain, her loneliness, her sexual repression, and ultimately her pursuit of unattainable perfection. The viewer can see the pressure on young Nina building from all sides, but one clearly senses that the greatest pressure is that which the ballerina places upon herself. Her descent is thus rooted in this internal struggle rather than on the external pressures, making the final thirty minutes all the more terrifying.
Overall, Aronofsky has succeeded once again at using his medium to create a visceral experience that allows the viewer to see and feel a wide variety of human emotions. His use of light and symbolism are without compare, at least among this year's crop of films. Aronofsky allows a glimpse into the human psyche that probably follows more closely along the lines of Requiem for a Dream and The Fountain, rather than The Wrestler, but may be a better overall film than all of the above.