Black Swan: Interesting and Intelligent

Rating: 7/10 (26 January 2011)

Hailed by many as a modern art masterpiece, nominated for awards aplenty, and benefiting from a series of rather beautiful posters, Black Swan was the first of the current Oscar bait pieces I was reeled in by.
An aspiring ballet dancer since her childhood, Nina Sayers is eager to be chosen for the lead role in her company's presentation of Swan Lake. The demanding role requires her to perform as both the white and black swans, the latter of which she is less well equipped to do. The competition from fellow dancer Lily, the restrictions of her overprotective mother, and strange marks on her back are just some of the oddities that begin to plague Nina as she trains.
The film begins, as it quite appropriately ought to, with a ballet sequence, the first of many. Perhaps ignorantly, I was slightly fearful of being overrun by an excess of such scenes, my general cynicism toward dance and the like making itself known in the back of my head. Such fears were, and are, entirely unwarranted. In its opening scene, Black Swan demonstrates beautifully the complex combination of cinematography, choreography, and performance which combine so well to create scenes of near dazzling effulgence even to the most hardened of sceptics. The first of these is also the most appealing, its grandeur revealed quickly to be a dream of our protagonist. Nina is portrayed wonderfully by Portman, the quiet fragility she brings to the character eliciting sympathy every step of the way, her apologetic passivity difficult not to sympathise with. Cassel too gives a fine performance, his sexually suspect instructor suitably imposing and creepy. Despite their mutual proficiency, these performances are both towered over by Hershey in her maternal role, one of the film's very strongest facets. Strong too is Aronofsky's use of mise-en-scène, the placement of mirrors throughout the film and the stark contrast between black and white which pervades its every scene working well with the general idea of duality which the film examines. This is, however, a little overstated by the end, the constancy of the monochrome and mirror effect becoming eventually an irritant through overuse. Subtlety seems an alien concept to the film, tarnishing slightly its otherwise wonderful art direction. Nevertheless, the film tackles its primary theme well, utilising the aforementioned visual cues to reinforce the narrative itself. Of the narrative, a quick complaint must be made. After an approximate eighty minutes of slow, contemplative, atmospheric building of tension and suspense, Aronofsky turns it all up to eleven and throws everything at us. Though it does little to detract from the overall effect of the film, it feels very sudden and tonally different from what came before, quite probably deliberately but unfortunately rather amusingly—not a feeling it should evoke.
Though its interesting and intelligent art direction is somewhat marred by its blatancy, Black Swan is a visually interesting piece, communicating certain ideas via its lighting and mise-en-scène ever before doing so via its narrative. Not as strong as it potentially could have been, and delving less deep into its central theme than perhaps it should, one wonders to what extra-narrative end, if any, the film has been envisioned. Though far too accelerated in its finale's insanity, the film is an entertaining work, visually appealing, and populated with interesting, well-articulated characters.