The Pursuit of Perfection

Rating: 10/10 (26 December 2011)

To really appreciate Black Swan, you have to have the soul of an artist to understand the psychological labor that true artists go through in order to produce a "perfect" piece of art. The movie depicts this process and succeeds in capturing the fine line between art and insanity.
Nina (Natalie Portman), an aspiring ballerina, gets the role of her life as the Swan Queen in the universally acclaimed ballet The Swan Lake. Being an inexperienced introvert and a stiff dependent, Nina finds it easy to embody the role of the innocent White Swan but extremely difficult to embody its evil counterpart: the seductive Black Swan. As a result, the show director, Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel), pushes her to dig deeper in herself and discover her own sexuality. In the meantime, Nina is totally obsessed with the new dancer, Lily (Mila Kunis), who joins the company and charms everybody with her spontaneity, playfulness, and sexual appeal. Lily becomes everything Nina is missing, everything she wants to be, i.e. the Black Swan!
At this point, the story of the ballet intertwines with reality, and Nina's daily life turns into a daily struggle to win the approval of the director by breaking the curse of the White Swan she is trapped in. Nina becomes completely indulged in the ballet that she loses the ability to distinguish between what's real and what's not. Such psychological conflict is beautifully symbolized in Nina's visions and role-giving to people in her life, and in her constant attempts to revolt against and break free from her mother and her meek self, so that she can let the Black Swan take control of her. All for the sake of art.. Perfect Art.
The movie is fraught with symbolism and psychological undertones, a trademark of any Darren Aronofsky work, that the average movie viewer probably will not tolerate. Nevertheless, I think this is Aronofsky's masterpiece and his finest so far. His ability to bring such dark and unreachable artistic desires on screen and merge them with visual beauty is stunning! Every scene in the movie is a painting to be studied and taught.
Natalie Portman's mind-blowing performance deserved every ounce of the Oscar she won for this role. This girl has it all: talent, charm, beauty, grace, intelligence and maturity. Kunis and Cassel were both playful and charming, being comfortable in their seemingly tailor-made roles.
And just to make everything perfect, and leaving me nothing to criticize, Clint Mansell adds his god-like touches to the movie's score turning it into a transcendental audio-visual piece of art.